All kids, when they are very young, imitate adult and parental behavior. (That sounds like a verbatim sentence from one of my Psychology books from college). Tim and I were certainly no different in our imitative behavior. What was ironic, however, was that every time we imitated certain things, we were “backhanded” or had our “mouths washed out with soap” (Lifebuoy Soap tasted terrible!)  The irony of it all is that kids always imitate the “bad” stuff, but rarely, if ever, the “good” stuff! Alas, I spent 7 and a half years studying human nature and I STILL don’t completely understand it!  Beside the “bad words,” we would foolishly parrot in front of our parents (which we heard them say), we would try our hand at smoking (clandestinely, of course) as all of them did! I sure lead a “charmed” life, since my growth wasn’t “stunted” as they said it would be. On the other hand, maybe it was… since I’m 6’ 2”; maybe I would have been 7 feet or more???? Hmmmmm.  Of course, when I later become a parent, I was the same way! I wish to focus in on the imitative area of smoking as very young kids. This was way before we “really got into it” when we were 14 or so.  When we were 5 or so, it started with pencils and sticks. We would put them in our mouth and pretend to “smoke.” This was harmless enough, but just like a crazed, hooked drug addict, we eventually needed a higher “dose” for extra “kicks.” As a result, we took this one step further. We found an old pipe up in one of the attics, AKA “The Woodhouse Chamber” (above and beside the attached woodshed”).  We decided to “smoke” it so instead of taking cigarette butts  and breaking them up for the tobacco, we used PENCIL SHAVINGS from our “At-home-just-like-at-school-wall mounted-crank” pencil sharpener!  At our very young ages, our “kid rationale” assumed if it looked like tobacco, then it must taste like tobacco too! To put it mildly, WE WERE DEAD WRONG! I remember us taking the “At-home-just-like-at-school-wall mounted-crank” pencil sharpener and empting out the shavings in our hands and stuffing it into the pipe. Then lighting it with a big “strike anywhere” Ohio Blue Tip Kitchen Match. I can vividly remember the burning sensation in my mouth as what was probably flames being momentarily drawn into my tender young mouth! I did learn one thing from this experience, PENCIL SHAVINGS ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR PIPE TOBACCO!!!  Our next “smoking phase” as we grew older was to smoke grapevines. This obnoxious practice was introduced to us by one of our family kid friends. After sneaking a supply of big “strike anywhere” Ohio Blue Tip Kitchen Matches and a paring knife, we walked back to our woods, which has always had a prolific supply of grape vines, that we heretofore used as “Tarzan swinging”, until this day when we were shown a “new use” for them. We carefully followed the instructions from the “older” kid.  You find a nice big vine and cut a “cigar-length” section out, then light the end and start to “puff.” Smoking grapevines only rated slightly above pencil shavings, the only improvement being the searing heat is a few degrees less. The taste is about the same. We stumbled and suffered through a few more years of occasional grape vine smoking until we FINALLY realized we could just sneak real cigarettes. The rest, as they (who are “they” anyway????), is history!