Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 29, 2017

That is one powerful figment of Mike’s imagination.

Still don’t get why Mike sleeps with his glasses on…

I’m sixty years old, and I have never smoked. Yet doctors routinely ask me if I do. So I have started telling them that I’m thinking of taking it up so I can be one of the cool kids.

One of my (college) students said he started smoking so he would look older. I told him that I had quit, to look younger! Not exactly true; I hadn’t really smoked, but hoped for the effect.

One time my mother went to her expert at the nursery to ask about one of her hanging plants, the one above my stepfather’s recliner, which had started looking a little dry and brown. The expert asked if she’d recently had a smoker visiting or spending a lot of time there, and she said no, in fact her husband had just had to quit smoking under his doctor’s strict order.

“That’s it!” said the person from the nursery. “The plant is addicted to your husband’s secondhand smoke and is now going through nicotine withdrawal.”

Seems Mr. Butts left some of his “excrement” behind?

I smoked from age 13 to age 47 and quit cold turkey! That’s the good news ! Now the bad news, I am now 80 and have been diagnosed with mild COPD!

Smoking is useful for two purposes: promotes profits for the tobacco industry and helps keep the population down.

Now we would have Mike haunted by an E Mr. Butts. New campaign for you, Mike!

This may sound like one-up-man-ship, but it’s not intended too. I started smoking at 18 while in the U>S> Navy, and quit for the nth time at 4-packs-a-day at age 60. Today at age 85, I too have medical problems — heart, bladder, lungs …