Tapper's Pipe

"Tapper's Pipe" is a mini-story that takes place in the EMPATH: The Luckiest Smurf story series.

Story
Polaris Psyche was making his rounds as the chief of security in the Smurf Village when he saw Tapper sitting outside his tavern, relaxing with a pipe in his mouth blowing soap bubbles.

"Greetings, my fellow Polaris," Tapper said. "How smurfs your day so far?"

"So far there has been no record of any disturbances within or outside this village, fellow Tapper," Polaris said. "This one is curious, however, about the pipe that you have in your mouth that you're using the blow bubbles with."

"Oh, this thing," Tapper said, taking the pipe out of his mouth. "Well, this smoking pipe has belonged to my Papa Smurf's family clan, the Ailill, for generations, and it was last smurfed by him when he was smurfing the tavern with my Mama Smurf."

"Then he has used this pipe for inhaling smoke produced by burning herbs, which this one has noticed a few Smurfs in the village doing," Polaris said.

"Unfortunately he has until the day he smurfed away, Polaris," Tapper said. "It's one of the things that he finds so relaxing to smurf after a hard day's smurf in the tavern. My Mama Smurf never liked him smoking, but it's one of those things about Smurfs that she had to smurf up with from her fellow Smurfs who loved to fill their lungs and the air around them with a cloud of smoke."

"No doubt the smoke they inhaled isn't good for their health, as this one can sense from the Smurfs in these times participating in this habit," Polaris said.

"It's one of the reasons that I don't smoke herbs, Polaris, besides the fact that the Almighty himself would not want me to smurf that habit," Tapper said. "That's why I prefer to use my Papa Smurf's pipe as a toy for smurfing bubbles than for smurfing up smoking. How I could not stand to smurf him coughing so much from years of smurfing in smoke, and my Mama Smurf knows how his voice used to smurf before he started smoking."

"This one doesn't understand why anyone would participate in this habit, even knowing the dangers to their own health that it exposes them to," Polaris said.

"You know that each of us feels like we have a right to smurf with our own bodies as we please, no matter the risks," Tapper said. "It's the reason that Hefty and Swimmer smurf tattoos on themselves, that Greedy and Nabby smurf more food than a reasonable Smurf should eat, and that Lazy smurfs more time sleeping than smurfing anything active with his fellow Smurfs. There's always that bit of selfishness that we own the bodies that were smurfed to us by the Almighty."

"But you do not believe that your body is your own, if this one understands you correctly," Polaris said.

"If the Almighty has paid for my soul with the price of His Son's blood, it's my obligation and duty to honor Him with everything I have, even what I smurf with my body," Tapper said. "That's why, even as a brewer and a bartender, I don't smurf myself drunk with my own drinks or smurf anything into my body that would cause it harm. Jesus Himself was accused of being a winesmurfer and a glutton when He smurfed food and drink with His disciples, but He showed through His actions that the accusations were just empty words smurfed by His opposers."

"This one is curious about the herb that some Smurfs have called smurfnip that they talk about smoking so much, Tapper," Polaris said.

Tapper snorted at the thought. "Oh, that herb. Well, it's the kind of herb that Papa Smurf doesn't want any Smurf to smoke or even eat, no matter how pleasant it may seem to be. It makes you smurf things that are not even real even when it makes you smurf real good. Greedy accidentally smurfed some of this into one of our meals, and it made us smurf a lot of things that weren't really there. We were so out of our minds that we couldn't smurf that Gargamel was nearby and that would have been the end for us if it weren't for some Smurfs that didn't eat the meal that night."

"So there is another danger to smoking herbs, particularly the smurfnip," Polaris said.

"It reminds me of the Forget Me Flowers that Smurfette had found in the forest when she, Brainy, and Sickly were investigating the snow on the mountain when spring was smurfing real early some years ago," Tapper said. "I couldn't help but notice that the flowers made the Smurfs who smelled them smurf a bit too happy and relaxed, but then I smurfed one of the flowers and that the last thing I remembered about them before I started acting like the rest of them. Fortunately, Sickly was allergic to flowers, and although he was unable to warn Papa Smurf about the flowers, he did find Mother Nature to tell her about them, and suddenly she made the weather cold enough to freeze the water at the dam and to destroy the flowers, resmurfing us to normal."

"This one can only wonder what your father would think if he saw you using his pipe for anything other than its original intended purpose, Tapper," Polaris said.

"As much as I wouldn't like to say it, that's one of the things that I'm glad that he's not living to smurf me anything about," Tapper said. "He smurfed this pipe for his own entertainment, as I'm sure the Papa Smurfs before him had done in their generations, and now I'm smurfing it for my own entertainment in a way that I feel that it should be smurfed."