Smokin'

Well, it appears that additional steps are being taken, legislatively, to curb smoking. I suspect that this will have the usual unintended consequences. What I also suspect is that the government, always looking out for you, will lower the nicotine content via regulation. This will result in an increase in tobacco consumption and, therefore, revenue to the government.

But that's just the cynic in me talking.

I used to smoke. Back when I was young. I started smoking when I was 12, emulating my idiot older brother. Within a very short time, I was smoking a pack a day. I never went above that, on average, that whole period in my life when I smoked.

Why did I smoke? The rebel image, I suppose, was the primary reason. Wanting to be cool or, at least, look that way. Actually, nothing is less cool looking than a skinny little kid with a cigarette dangling from his lips.

When you are young, and reasonably healthy, you can easily mask the short term effects of smoking. I had plenty of lung power and stamina. I was not easily winded. I was very active, ran a lot (well, it was mostly from the police but...), and stayed in shape just by being an active teen. Could I have been healthier if I hadn't smoked? Debatable. We cannot know what might have been.

I started thinking about quitting when I was 15. Not because I felt it was doing me a lot of harm but because I did not like being less than in maximum control of my life. Yeah, I was fooling myself that I had much control over my life at that age but that's a teenager for you.

I had long philosophical discussions with The Cigarette. Yes, I talked to inanimate objects then. Still do. Most of my best debates are with inanimate objects.. They don't interrupt, they don't get insulted or angry, and they hardly ever make a valid point.

Except, as often as I would win those debates with The Cigarette, I would still continue smoking. I might win the battles but I was definitely not winning the war. After awhile, I gave up giving up. By 18, I wasn't even pretending to try anymore. The best I could do was maintain the level at a pack a day.

I'd like to say I was a polite smoker but that isn't true. There is no such thing. Oh sure, as a smoker, I thought I was polite and courteous around non-smokers. I thought I was considerate. I was fooling myself. All smokers do. The polite ones were the non-smokers.

Even as I asked if anyone minded if I smoked, I was usually just about to light up or already had. I always assumed I would be granted permission. Because I almost always was. I relied on their acquiescence, on their tendency to be polite.

The dirty little secret is that all smokers do.

It was only when the smoker runs into a born again non-smoker, the former smoker, does he get refused that permission.

If I may digress a moment (and I may... since it is my blog), I recall one incident where a salesman was at my house trying to sell me and my then wife (The Ex) on an addition, a back porch. Everything was going fine, we had wanted a back porch, we could afford it, and we should have been an easy sell. Then he lit up a cigarette. He didn't ask, he didn't think about it, he just lit it up.

It was only when he had a fair sized ash on that cigarette that he realized that he might have committed a faux pas. As he looked about for an ash tray, it dawned on him that there were none to be found. Even though my wife smoked, she did not smoke in the house. She only smoked at work and in her car. Once she arrived home, no tobacco. So there were no ash trays. He looked almost sheepish when he asked for one and was told "we don't smoke in this house." And he went to the front door and dropped the ash and his cigarette outside.

Along with his sale.

I rarely enjoyed smoking, only the ones after a meal, the one after sex (if I didn't fall asleep right away), and the one after a big scare. Smoking was mostly about staving off boredom.

I tried to quit smoking just before leaving the Navy. I had a financial incentive. Cigarettes were cheap in the service. Especially out at sea; ten cents a pack (twenty in port). Potato chips were more expensive. But all of a sudden, it would be thirty five cents a pack (hey, we're talking 1969 here). And I am a cheapskate.

I did pretty good for a few months limiting myself to just smoking on the weekends. Then I was about to get married. In the month before that date, I went back to a pack a day. It took me some time to get back to my weekend routine.

I was just fooling myself. I was pretending that I was in control. And then came the night my son was born. That was the night I smoked my last cigarette.

That was almost 39 years ago. And way down deep, back in the ugliest recesses of my mind, the twinge of an urge still lingers.

[1272/1273/1142]