Written by Czar Fruitcake
2nd DISCLAIMER: I’ve had a lot of margaritas tonight…
SUMMARY: Cigarettes are bad. They were bad the first eighteen times 7th Heaven did an after-school special-esque episode on smoking, and whadya know, they still are…
Ruthie Camden was in the middle of a marvelous dream in which she possessed a tiny hand-held shocking device that could be used to anonymously shock any inhabitant of the Glen Oak-verse when their stupidity levels rose dangerously high. She had just delivered a rather satisfying shock to Kevin when she was awakened by a persistent scratching sound. She glanced around, unsure of where the noise was coming from, and unable to ascertain its location, left the room in hope of some new and interesting action.
She passed by Simon’s room on the way down to the kitchen and found her neurotic mother frantically searching through Simon’s drawers.
“Uh, what are you doing, Mom?” she asked suspiciously.
“I haven’t gotten mad at Simon in awhile. I need to behave like the psychotic meddlesome and completely irrational mother that I am and snoop through his room until I find some measly shred of evidence that I can use against him. Ah-ha! Check this out – a pack of cigarettes!”
Ruthie just stared, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu. Had the network suddenly reverted to re-runs from earlier seasons?! She was too confused to THWACK Annie, so they both stalked downstairs to yell at Simon.
“Do you have something you want to tell me, Simon?” Annie asked in a sugary sweet voice.
Simon, who was sitting at the kitchen table eating a peanut butter sandwich, shrugged. “Not that I can think of.”
“I found CIGARETTES in your drawer, Simon! C-I-G-A-R-E-T-T-E-S!!! How do you explain that, eyebrow-boy, huh? HUH?!”
Simon looked around dubiously, then leaned in toward Annie and whispered, “aren’t you quoting an episode from three seasons ago?”
“Shhhhhh!” hissed Annie. “The writers ran out of after-school special plotlines, so we’re re-using this one and hoping no one notices.”
“Okay, Mom,” Simon replied in an exaggerated whisper. “But, just as I told you last time, I don’t smoke. This time the cigarettes aren’t even mine. You know that I don’t smoke because the people with problems such as these are always friends of ours. The writers would never actually let a Camden smoke.”
“Oh yeah?” said Annie, not wanting to be one-upped by a wannabe teen idol. “Watch me.”
She took a cigarette from the pack and miraculously, a lighter appeared in her other hand. She lit up and took a puff, and then nearly choked. Simon and the twins giggled. Ruthie THWACKed them both and headed for the living room.
“Kevin, I know you still haven’t gotten me an engagement ring, but that’s okay with me now. I’m going to stop being so crazy now,” Lucy was saying.
“That’s great Lucy,” Kevin replied.
“Great? You think this is GREAT?! Is this just your way of telling me that I’m crazy?! I can’t marry someone who thinks I’m crazy!!!” Lucy shrieked.
“Um, you said that, not me. I’m just trying to be supportive.” Kevin backed away slowly, looking desperately toward Ruthie for assistance.
THWACK! Ruthie smacked Lucy upside the head, snapping her out of her crazy rampage. Lucy looked up, dazed.
“Uh, Lucy, I’ll be back later…I’m going to go outside for a smoke, er, walk.”
Later that day, Eric drove Ruthie and her boyfriend at the promenade. On their way to the movie theater, they came across someone who looked suspiciously like Chandler except for the fact that he was chain-smoking, covered in tattoos, and wearing leather.
“Oh, look, it’s Chandler’s evil twin!” Ruthie exclaimed.
Eric ignored her. “What is Chandler doing?! Look at the image he is putting forth for our church-going community!”
“Dad, that can’t be Chandler. Chandler doesn’t have tattoos. And that guy doesn’t even look like Chandler. This is an obvious TV plot bunny ploy to deceive the stupidest of our reviewers for a few minutes. Everyone with half a brain knows that when this happens on TV it’s because someone’s evil twin shows up. This scenario is especially likely when the actor that plays a particular character has an evil twin in real life.”
“Chandler!” Eric yelled. “What do you think you’re doing?!”
Ruthie sighed.
“Uh, I’m not Chandler,” replied Evil Twin. “And who the hell are you?”
“Stop pretending you don’t know me, Chandler! You can’t do things like this. As an associate minister of the church, you have an obligation to our parishioners…”
“I take it you know my TWIN BROTHER Chandler,” Evil Twin said.
THWACK. Eric got his upside the head.
“What? Who are you? And what are you doing here?” Eric was very confused.
“Oh, I’m Chandler’s token evil twin. I think my name’s supposed to be Sid. I’m just here to be another person who smokes in this disgustingly amalgamated anti-smoking episode. Oh, and by the way, did you know that Chandler’s and my father smokes too? In fact, as we speak, he is dying of lung cancer. Hear that, young impressionable children? DYING OF LUNG CANCER!!!”
“Can I ask what every intelligent viewer is wondering right now?” Ruthie asked. “If your father is dying of lung cancer, WHY ARE YOU SMOKING?”
“Shhhhhhh!” hissed Evil Twin, shooting Ruthie a dirty look. He then turned and smiled at the camera. “It’s, uh, really hard you know. I’m trying to quit.”
Ruthie THWACKed him once and then she and Peter walked away. “Guess what, Ruthie?” Peter said all of a sudden. “I don’t really think smoking is all that bad. In fact, some of my good friends smoke. When I’m with them, I smoke too.”
THWACK. Peter got his upside the head. “You’re an idiot, Peter. And I don’t date idiots.”
“Ruthie! What’s the big deal?”
She looked at him as though he had the IQ of a broken crayon. Oh wait, he did. “Do you not see that flashing neon sign above your head that says ‘I’M STUPID’?”
Peter looked up. There was, indeed, a sign.
“Just don’t tell my mom,” Peter told her.
“Sure, Peter,” Ruthie replied.
The moment she got home, she called up Peter’s mom. “I know you may not believe me, but your son Peter smokes.” Then she hung up.
Five minutes later, Peter called. “Ruthie, I know I told you not to tell my mom, but now that she’s yelled at me and grounded me until my brain grows in, I suddenly see the error of my ways and I am incredibly thankful that you had the foresight to intervene and prevent me from meandering down a path headed for inevitable eventual destruction.”
“What?” Ruthie said.
“Sorry, I forgot. I don’t know words that big. Ruthie, you’re PRETTY. Want to kiss me?”
Going down to the kitchen, Ruthie found Simon, Annie, Kevin, and the twins in a heated discussion. Samvid was smoking a cigar fashioned from bits of crayola crayons.
“I can’t believe you put the cigarettes in my drawer!” Simon exclaimed. “What is it about that drawer? Why does everybody seem to want to hide every illegal substance they can find there?!”
“Do you see this, Kevin? This is what happens when you smoke in front of the twins!” Annie said in a gently scolding tone.
“We saw him smoking by the trash cans,” Samvid announced articulately.
Ruthie resisted the urge to THWACK Samvid for speaking an age-appropriate coherent sentence. Unheard of.
“Did anyone ever think about the fact that everybody in this family, including you Mom, has picked up a cigarette at sometime during this episode? Why blame Kevin?”
Lucy entered the kitchen in an angry rage. “You smoked, Kevin? I heard this conversation all the way from the library because of my extra-sensory Kevin-radar and came here to act like a psychotic freak yet again. Smoking smoking smoking! Bad bad bad! Why can’t you give me an engagement ring?! But I can’t marry someone who smokes! I don’t know what to do!”
“Uh, sorry, Luce, but I gotta go meet Ben. Apparently he’s been dating some girl that we don’t know for quite some time now. Then again, I think we all forget that he lives here because we’re not quite sure why he does considering he’s not dating a Camden.”
“Wah!” Lucy wailed as Kevin left. Ruthie THWACKed her and ran after Kevin, nearly tripping on Happy, who was smoking a Cuban cigar.
They found Ben at (guess where?) the Promenade! The Promenade just so happens to be the only public venue in existence in GlenOak. Oh, wait there was that bowling alley they went to one time…
Anyway, Ben and his flavor were standing outside the ice-cream shop. Ben was eating a sundae. His flavor was *dun da da dun* smoking a cigarette.
“You’re SMOKING,” were the first words Kevin said to her. “And smoking is BAD.”
“Weren’t you smoking by the trash cans earlier today?” Ben asked him.
“Yes, Ben,” Kevin replied, acting as though this were the most ridiculous comment ever. “But in the few hours since then I have seen the error of my ways and am now a changed man!”
“Wow, Kevin, now that you’ve said that, I think you might be right! Smoking IS bad. I’m sorry, whatever-the-hell-your-name-is, but I can’t see you anymore. We’ll take you home now.”
Ruthie THWACKed him. Just for fun.
When they got to her house, they were amazed to discover that there was no house there. “Where did it go?” she asked, looking around in confusion and completely oblivious to the fire trucks and policeman surrounding the area where the house once stood.
“The house burned down,” a police officer (not Kevin or Sergeant Michaels!) announced. “Someone dropped a lit cigarette onto the wooden floor.”
“Oh, that’s mine!” Ben’s ex-flavor announced. “Don’t tell me I have to pay a littering fine…”
“No, there’s no littering fine,” the officer said slowly, eyeing the rest of the group suspiciously. “But you no longer have a house.”
“Eh, whatever. Wasn’t my house anyway,” she replied, still cheerful. “Anybody want to play Scrabble?”
Ruthie was exhausted by the time she trudged back to her attic bedroom to crawl into bed. She was greeted by the same persistent scratching sound that had been there earlier that morning. This time, however, she was able to ascertain that the noise was coming from a large trunk near Lucy’s bed. She managed to unlock and open the trunk and found Yasmin inside.
“What in the world are you doing in there?!” Ruthie asked incredulously.
“Remember in the last chapter of THWACK when you locked me in your room for several hours?”
Ruthie scrunched her brow. “Oh yeah, sorry about that.”
Yasmin scowled. “Well, I got bored waiting all day for you, so I climbed in here and accidentally shut it and couldn’t get out.”
Ruthie smiled and nodded as though that made perfect sense. “I’m really sorry about that, Yasmin. It was a crazy day.”
Yasmin shrugged. “That’s all right, I don’t have enough emotional depth to harbor grudges. So, how’s your day been?”
“In trying to create an über-cohesive after-school special on smoking, the writers and plot bunnies have sacrificed all semblance of reality whatsoever. Not only did a grossly disproportionate number of people smoke in this episode for no particular reason, the writers also seem to have forgotten that we live in California, where it is illegal to smoke pretty much anywhere besides your own car or home.”
“That’s nice, Ruthie,” Yasmin replied without any semblance of sentiment. “I have to go now. My über-strict parents will be wondering where I went.” She left the room, closed the door behind her, and waved goodbye to the Tasmanian belly dancer in the hallway (also smoking a cigarette).