by Ken Vincent, Featured Contributor
OKAY DON’T DENY IT. You have your little pet vices. I admit that I have some, and quite frankly I like them. If I didn’t like them I wouldn’t practice them. I also show resistance to being told that I have to abandon them. That is what I’m doing here, venting.
That seems to be happening to me a lot lately. My gastroenteritis doctor told me that I have to stop drinking wine with dinner. It adds to my acid reflux. Well, I’m sorry chief, I happen to enjoy a nice glass of wine (or two) well paired with my gourmet dinner. Yes, I like rich gourmet food too and that is another vice according to him. If I listened to him I would eat white rice, kale, and drink only purified water. Well, I won’t do it. That is no way to live.
My lung specialist says that smoking my pipe exacerbates my chronic bronchitis. Well, I’ve smoked a pipe since I was 16 (that is another whole story) and I rather like it. My pipe is a part of me 
and my persona. I find it soothing in times of trouble, and frankly have acquired a taste for fine tobaccos. Why do I find it inconsistent that everyone argues that smoking tobacco kills and then legalizes smoking marijuana? Am I the only one that sees a flaw in this? Smoking one weed is better than smoking another weed? That is rather like telling you that your silk underwear is causing a rash, so you should buy some made out of horse hair or wool.
Why are people always trying to make us into someone that we don’t want to be? While all this is troubling it is compounded by the medical profession slowly turning me into a bionic man. They replace my cornea with plastic lenses. My teeth with gold ones. My ears are now clogged with hearing aids. One day my hips and knees will be artificial too.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that all those options are available today. They are certainly an improvement over the day when doctors believed in leaches and used meat cleavers for amputations.
But, it still doesn’t alter the fact that I’m being pushed, pulled, and remolded into something that I don’t really want to be and that is discomforting.
So, come clean. What are your little pet vices? You like a gourmet 8 oz burger piled high with thick cut bacon and blue cheese with a side of fries even though it plays havoc with your cholesterol? How about that dry vodka martini with two salty olives before dinner? Maybe yours is that large slice of double chocolate cake that packs another pound on your hips? What about that new habit of texting while having dinner? How about your habit of giving life advice to you niece and nephew? Or perhaps you are one of those that have some more exotic vices that you can share. Who knows, maybe you have one that someone else would like to try. Maybe you have one that I can use to replace the ones they insist that I shouldn’t have. One of the nice aspects of vices is that they can be enjoyed by any number of people.
If nothing else, I can enjoy the new vice until someone finds that I have it and insists that I abandon it.
