When I was a kid, both my Grandma and Dad smoked cigarettes. Did I ever hate their habit, mostly because it made them stink. We spent years helping Grandma pretend that she didn't smoke, even though her bathroom was sprinkled with ashes, had yellowed walls, and smelled like a wet ashtray. Dad never brought it in the house and mostly smoked in the car, so it stuck to his clothes and followed him everywhere he went. I vowed that I would never smell like that when I grew up.
My first venture into the real world was to college in Washington, where everyone smoked. It was inescapable. When I was back home attending community college, there was still no escaping it. One of my favorite memories from that school was overhearing someone scolding a smoker, "You just lost seven minutes of your life." I was never sure if he meant each cigarette has been proven to shorten a smoker's life by seven minutes or if he just meant they wasted seven minutes during which they could have been doing something other than smoking.
Doesn't really matter because, within a matter of months, I moved to Santa Barbara and became a smoker myself. It's hard to say how it happened exactly -- though it's probably safe to blame it on a combination of cute boys and beer -- but soon I was involved in a pack a day love affair...er, uhh, habit. There's just something about cigarettes that go so well with the immortality complex of being twenty-one and single. Besides, everyone was doing it!
Turns out the future husband smoked, too; and we smoked together for a long time. Of course, we made it our resolution to quit just about every New Year's until it finally stuck. Now, it's been five whole years since we officially gave up the cancer sticks, cold turkey.
It wasn't so bad, actually, until I woke up on Monday morning of the third week and couldn't move. The husband had to call in sick on my behalf because I literally was too weak to hold the phone. The Great Cigarette Detox of 2003 ended up lasting a full two weeks. It was pure misery. There was the fever portion, the wretched coughing episodes, the inability to eat syndrome, and total lack of interaction with people other than a few grunts of sick-person communication to the husband. By the end of it all, I lost fifteen pounds that I didn't really have to spare and it was months before I started to really feel like myself again.
As I recall, the husband was the more resistant one in our initial pact to quit smoking. One of the conditions of the agreement was that smoking would be permitted only in times of extreme stress, such as a death. I agreed since it wasn't likely we'd have do deal with anything like that for years and years.
Wrong again. Just under three years later, we ended our cigarette fast to try to cope with the loss of my sister. It felt weak and lame, but that's what we did. Actually, we've spent the last few years saying that we're non-smokers when it's not exactly the whole truth. Our current routine is to smoke when the husband's band plays or when a loved one does something so frustrating that it feels like there's no other rational choice.
Still, we have successfully broken the daily habit. Thank you, thank you very much.
These days, my reaction to cigarettes has two sides. Sometimes, when I walk by a smoker on the sidewalk, I have this ridiculous urge to rush at them and steal drag or to go in for a kiss just for a shot at their exhale. But, mostly, I have my childhood gag reflex and wonder what the hell I ever saw in those evil little things anyway because, man, they sure do stink.
As I recall, the husband was the more resistant one in our initial pact to quit smoking. One of the conditions of the agreement was that smoking would be permitted only in times of extreme stress, such as a death. I agreed since it wasn't likely we'd have do deal with anything like that for years and years.
Wrong again. Just under three years later, we ended our cigarette fast to try to cope with the loss of my sister. It felt weak and lame, but that's what we did. Actually, we've spent the last few years saying that we're non-smokers when it's not exactly the whole truth. Our current routine is to smoke when the husband's band plays or when a loved one does something so frustrating that it feels like there's no other rational choice.
Still, we have successfully broken the daily habit. Thank you, thank you very much.
These days, my reaction to cigarettes has two sides. Sometimes, when I walk by a smoker on the sidewalk, I have this ridiculous urge to rush at them and steal drag or to go in for a kiss just for a shot at their exhale. But, mostly, I have my childhood gag reflex and wonder what the hell I ever saw in those evil little things anyway because, man, they sure do stink.
