no such thing

This morning on You Tube I watched a scene from "The Sopranos":

Tony's driving his car, his teen-age daughter is in the passenger seat.
You know how when you're alone in a car with someone, you talk? Maybe about something you wouldn't bring up if there were other people around, or if you were at home in the kitchen, or something?
The daughter turns her head to look at Tony Soprano and asks, "Are you in the Mafia?"
-------------------------------------

He looks surprised; he's actually surprised because he wasn't expecting her to ask that, and he's also trying to appear surprised so she'll think he isn't in the Mafia.
He says he's in waste management, and when you're in that business everybody immediately assumes you're mobbed up.

"It's a stereotype. It's offensive."
("Mobbed up" -- I love that!)

A few moments of silence. He turns his head to look at the girl and says,
"There is no Mafia."
!!
No such thing as ghosts.
I see why people like that show.
In a sense, it's a little like "Bewitched" in that the family lives Surface Life and also Subterranean Life that some people aren't supposed to know about.
"People" mustn't find out that Samantha is a witch.
"People" mustn't know that Tony Soprano is in the -- no, wait a minute, they mustn't know that he's "mobbed up." There we go.

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