ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702120018
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: MARGIE FISHER
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER
ELLEN GOODMAN won't mind if I borrow her idea for a mea culpa column if I promise to give it back. She doesn't have a patent on regrets, anyway. All those who put their opinions in writing for a newspaper occasionally wish they could go back, explain, clarify, retract
So it is with a column I wrote last September in which I tut-tutted cigar smoking. I've changed my mind.
Oh, I was right: Cigars stink, are bad for your health and the environment, and it is incongruous that the smoking of pricey stogies has become fashionable and acceptable when cigarette smoking is equated with child molestation.
But I salute the cigar smokers. They are rebels with a cause, defending an enclave of pleasurable self-indulgence against the forces of ``good.''
Mea culpa. I'd rather be in their corner (wearing a gas mask) then on the side of self-righteous, insufferable scolds pressing in on free spirits, dictating what's ``good'' and proper, and laying on the guilt for any deviations from the rules: No smoking. No fat. No loud music. No carousing. No flirting. No fur. No fooling around.
Of course, the scolds' proscriptions against our sins and excesses may be in the best interest of our health, our environment and our chances at sainthood. But it seems to me that now includes everything - except overwork.
Is there no time off for ``bad'' behavior - spontaneity, mischief-making, joie de vivre, belly laughs, yielding to temptation, throwing caution to the wind, simply having fun?
Doubtless, I will be arrested on a morals charge for writing this, but, planning to plead temporary insanity, I hereby confess:
Sometimes I have an overwhelming urge to litter. Nothing so gross, mind you, as an empty soft-drink can thrown out the car window; just a very small, clear, cellophane wrapper from a piece of hard candy. (Hey, it's sugarfree candy.) And I miss the days before recycling when I could toss newspapers into the trash.
Sometimes, when the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra has truly thrilled me by its performance, I want to stand and clap and holler ``Bravo!'' between movements, when symphony decorum requires me to sit quietly on my hands.
I don't floss my teeth every day. Worse, I sometimes lie to my dental hygienist about it.
I believe in historic preservation, but I see some run-down, ugly 100-year-old structures and infrastructures in Roanoke that I think should be razed or might be improved if they were defaced with graffiti. I'd buy the spray paint, except the virtue vigilantes would come after me.
I can barely muffle a laugh when children joke about snot and boogers. Pangs of remorse - but I even find some lampoons on ethnic differences and physical deformities hilarious. Vicious, but hilarious.
Moreover, I'm sometimes tempted to make anonymous calls to my neighbors: ``Is your refrigerator running? Better hurry and catch it. Hee hee hee.'' Oh, well. It probably wouldn't be any fun now that everyone has telephone-answering machines, and call-tracing services could land me in the hoosegow.
And speaking of telephones, I think it's regrettable that modern communications has probably put the quietus on office romances.
Whither secretive, whispered sweet nothings that can set the soul atingle when nobody answers his or her own telephone, and voice mail can dampen any ardor? Lunch-hour trysts? Brief rendezvous at the water cooler? I know where there's a will there's a way. But in today's all-work, no-play office culture, everybody is too busy reading her or his E-mail.
Mea culpa for any offense. But as someone once said, ``The unindulged life is not worth living.''
Are we having any fun yet? Have we gotten too good for our own good?
LENGTH: Medium: 72 linesby CNB