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| The Cool Kid |
My dad quit smoking when I
was in my teens. He quit just about the time I started. My cigarette of choice at the age of fifteen,
was Lucky Strikes with no filter. They proved a bit too harsh for my tender
teenage lungs. So by my sixteenth birthday I quit the Lucky's and started
smoking Winston cigarettes. After all, Fred and Wilma assured me that Winston
tastes good like a cigarette should. Yes, I was cool. I stood out on the
corner, just outside the high school property, smoking with all the cool kids.
By the time I was in my twenties I was on the Marlboro Lights, and I loved it.
I would sit in my living room next to the giant ashtray filled with dozens of
cigarette butts, and smoke until the room was a silvery haze. Seriously, I
loved smoking cigarettes. But there was a problem. Doctors and scientists kept
telling me it would kill me. I smoked on. Then around the time I was thirty
three years old they raised the price of cigarettes to a dollar fifty.
Outrageous. So I quit. I was not going to pay that price for something that had
been proven to be a killer.
When I met Mark it was
obvious that he smoked. No problem. I made him smoke outside when he was in my
house. I was now anti smoking. After a few years with Mark and after he landed
in the hospital a few times with pneumonia, I told him he should stop smoking.
He wouldn't. Mark loved smoking as much as I did twenty years before. So I
would find his cigarette packs and throw them in the garbage. He'd just buy
more.
Twenty years ago my dad died
from lung disease. I don't know if it was the Camel cigarettes he smoked, but
I'm sure they didn't help. Now I am full time taking care of my ex-smoker
husband. It isn't pleasant. Mark's lungs are not working very well anymore.
He's bedridden and in bad shape. Smoking kills. But if that doesn't bother you,
how about this. Cigarettes now cost about twelve dollars a pack in Chicago. A
pack a day is $4,380 per year.
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| The Good Old Days. |
I am sad that smoking took your sweetheart so cruelly. It's such a horrid habit to try and quit, worse they say than quitting heroin or cocaine. I remember my dad "quitting" when I was in 5th grade. He was never seen smoking again... until I my brother got in a serious car accident, and then my sister surprised him unexpectedly smoking behind the garage. When I was 16 I showed up unannounced at his work and found him smoking in the parking lot. A series of smoking opportunities occurred ever few years on and off for decades, but he was never thought of as an active smoker. When we were cleaning out his house after his death we found squirrel holes hidden all over the house and property with half packs of cigarettes. It was obvious he was never able to fully quit them, and the shame of actually smoking was too much for him. The whole of it made me so sad.
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