I Called for My Pipe?

Yesterday morning we were recipients of an act that was both good deed and health hazard.

Here’s the backgrounder: On the weekend, my family and I spotted a couple of pieces of tobacco pipe littering the sidewalk near our house. Actually, we didn’t know just what it was initially. The bowl of the pipe, on first glance, strongly resembled a chestnut – not such an unusual thing to find on the ground. But then we found the pipe stem a few feet away and pieced it together (little pun). Although I can say with confidence that we’ve previously seen more chestnuts than pipes around these parts, it’s not such a wacky find. We do live in the city, and on the archeological puzzle that is our block I’ve cleaned up lost gloves, a child’s building block, a trampled pair of prescription glasses and some items too unmentionable to mention (hooray for disposable gloves).

I regret to say that I didn’t immediately scoop up the pipe parts. I could tell you we were embarking on a family walk and didn’t want to carry the litter around with us. But that’s a sorry excuse. By the time we got home again, I’d conveniently forgotten all about it.

So what happened yesterday? I walked out the front door in the morning to find a gift waiting on one of our patio chairs: It was the pipe, fully assembled. Some passerby had picked up the parts, thoughtfully put them back together and placed the pipe where we’d be sure to see it. All the while assuming, of course, that I – or my husband, or my little girl – is some bereft, heavy-duty smoker. Sure, the good-deed-doer was enabling a bad habit. But his or her heart was in the right place, even if my lungs were not.

In 50 Good Deeds news, I now have a Facebook fan page. Please be sure to visit and click “Like” (if we get enough of them, my page gets to play with the bigger pages!). And if you happen to pick up the summer issue of Best Health magazine, turn to pages 32 and 33 for a recap of the editors’ first-ever Blog Awards and a profile of the winners, including moi. Enjoy… and tar the roads, not your lungs.