Ilovetosmoke!Ilovetosmoke! Ilovetosmoke!
I really do. I know a lot of you are saying, "What the fuck is she thinking? Eeeew!" I can understand that. Smoking is a filthy habit. I know this. I have always known this. If you would have asked me when I was a teenager if I would ever smoke, I would have told you in a definitive way that no, I would never smoke. Because my mom smoked---and still does. Oddly enough, it's not the fact she smokes that bothers/ed me: it was her choice of cigarettes that drove me up the wall. Because Mom smokes menthols. If you've ever smoked a menthol, you'll know that it's like lighting up a piece of peppermint candy and trying to inhale it. I hated driving around with her on a winter's day. Even now I can conjure up the conjoined smell of the car heater and her menthols. GAG! She never cracked a window, either, and if you did, well, you heard about it. Bleech. This is why I never thought I would smoke and I made it all the way through high school and most of college without ever trying one.
Now, Mom used to smoke Salems. I remember as kid I would have to go over to the Amoco station to get ciggies for her. She's write out a note that said, "Please sell a pack of Salem 100's to my daughter, Kathy." She'd sign and date the note, give me a dollar and change and I'd be on my merry way. I'd get to the station, I'd hand over the note and the money, whomever was behind the counter would hook me up. I'd run home with the cigs and hand them over to Mom. It was no big deal. Today that sort of activity would get you prosecuted for child abuse, but this was the seventies and things were a bit different back then. I never looked askew at my mom for smoking when I was younger. Lots of people smoked; she was just one of many. But, of course, this period of time was the beginning of the end for smokers. The Surgeon General had gotten his warning on each and every pack. Everyone was talking about lung cancer, and of course, in the schools, they were starting with the anti-smoking propaganda campaigns. Every once in a while you'd get a teacher who would tell you to ask your parents to stop smoking because it was bad for them. They were, obviously, trying to guilt trip people into quitting. Now, I knew better than to do that with my mother. Mom is generally not someone who tolerates people guilting her into anything: she's the one who does the guilting, not the other way round, thank you very much. The only time I ever asked her to quit was when my father pretty much ordered me to. I was skeptical and was afraid I was going to get yelled at by her. But I knew if I didn't, Dad would chastise me, so being stuck between a rock and a hard place, I went into the kitchen and asked her to quit smoking. I remember her pausing for a long moment. She nodded her head slightly, as if to say, I see what you're saying. She then took a long drag and proceed to reply. Her answer, given in a firm, but polite tone, was, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
And that's a pretty good answer on the whole. I've found it very useful over the years whenever anyone tried to guilt me into quitting. Because plenty of people have tried. Smoking is a personal choice and anyone who tells you that the evil tobacco companies are luring children into smoking with their "deceptive marketing" is full of shit. You should know that. This is a personal choice people make and everyone has the opportunity to say no, thank you, I don't want to do that. Everyone and their brother, by this stage of the game, knows that smoking is bad for them. It is and we smokers know it. We take responsibility for our choices, just like you non-smokers do for yours. It's pretty simple stuff, on the whole.
But, unfortunately, smokers are unable to tell people to mind their own business anymore. Because it was one thing when people took responsibility for their actions, and other people chose to live and let live. Nowadays they don't do that. Now it's all about public health. And God help you if you choose yourself over the health of everyone else. You're a bad person for doing this, don't you know? Where's your sense of compassion for the person who doesn't want to breathe your smoke? Gosh, you really should get with the program, shouldn't you? So, while you're not going to give up your habit, yet you remember what it was like to be a non-smoker who didn't like the smoke, in response you become an overly polite smoker. You excused yourself when you're at a restaurant and go to the bar to smoke. When you were at a bar, you asked if the person next to you minded if you smoked and if they did, you took yourself to another part of the bar. You excused yourself and went outside when you were at someone else's home. Even in your own home, you didn't smoke in front of guests you knew didn't like it. When you smoked outdoors, you picked up your butts and disposed of them no matter where you were. You were polite about your habit. You tried not to put anyone out with it. You, of course, pushed back when some anti-smoking zealot went too far, but, again, you were polite about it. But your politeness, apparently, wasn't good enough for some.
You see, when smoking became a public health "crisis" war was declared. And we all know that all's fair in love and war. So the anti-smoking advocates put out faulty and misleading information about the dangers of secondhand smoke in an attempt to get things their way. Really, some of their lies would make Goebbels stand up and cheer for the blatant use of propaganda. Now, no one's saying it's a good thing to breathe in other people's smoke. It is, however, misleading in the extreme to put an ad on a bus that claims "secondhand smoke kills more people each year than murder." I see this ad on a daily basis. I don't know who has paid for it, because there's no credit listed anywhere on the ad. Now, think about that claim for a moment: secondhand smoke kills more people each year than murder. Really? How so? How can you say, definitively, that of all the people who die each year, more of them die from secondhand smoke than from murder? When someone is murdered, we have the statistics because the coroner who examines the body post mortem has to fill out a form. They have to check a little box that says that this person's death was not natural and then they have to say why. Furthermore, they have to be prepared to testify in court as to their findings. Is there a little box on a death certificate which the coroner checks when someone's keeled over, declaring the cause of death to be secondhand smoke? No, of course there isn't and anyone with half a brain knows this. The anti-smoking advocates are playing games with statistics. They can contribute x numbers of death each year to heart disease, lung cancer, etc. And as we know all of these diseases are exacerbated when you smoke. These anti-smoking advocates then make the massive leap of the imagination by declaring that because people are exposed to smoke every day, then, of course, anyone who dies of heart disease, etc. if they didn't smoke must have been killed by secondhand smoke! Not only is that faulty logic, they have no way of proving that fact. There is simply no way they can prove it. But are they called on it? Nope. Because it's for a good cause. They're trying to save lives!
So, if you're a smoker today, not only do you have these anti-smoking advocates hounding you to change your wicked ways for the good of everyone else, you have the added fun of being forced to pay extra for said wicked ways to support everyone else's bad habits. Because smoking is bad for you. It's a vice, hence the government believes they can tax you extra for this vice. Now, this seems a wee bit illogical, doesn't it? I can't be the only one who thinks this way. Every single branch of government, state, city or federal---at the behest of of the anti-smoking zealots---has pretty much declared war on smokers. They pass legislation saying you can't smoke in your workplace. You can't smoke in bars or restaurants or any number of other places, until the only place there is to smoke is one square mile in the middle of North Dakota. They justify this by saying they're protecting the non-smokers, BUT then they also throw out the excuse that, ahem, they're trying to get the smokers to quit as well. Yet, when their budgets don't balance and they need an extra source of income, they automatically tax the smokers and their excuse is always and forever smokers choose to smoke. So one minute smokers are seen as suckers who are being taken advantage of by the "evil" big tobacco companies, yet in the next, we're making our own choices, hence we're responsible for our actions and the government can tax us for it. Well, you know what, people? Make up your fucking minds. I've had it. I'm tired of being jerked around by people who not only want to tell me what to do in an effort to save me from myself, but who also want me to keep smoking to fund their governmental largesse.
So, having had it with being jerked around by a government who can't think straight, today, I quit smoking.
I also quit to piss off Tim Pawlenty, too.
I smoked my last cigarette this morning at midnight. The husband sat with me and we chatted leisurely. I fully enjoyed it. I timed it so it was the last cigarette of the pack and I didn't regret it when I stubbed it out. Afterward, I threw the empty pack away, cleaned out the ashtray for the last time and went to bed. I'm done with smoking. But I'm not done with the nicotine addiction. This morning, when I woke up, the husband helped me put my first patch on. He gets to choose the location every day because you have to place the patch somewhere between your neck and your waist, on non-hairy skin, but it has to be in a different position from day to day. You can't put it in the same place twice for a week. Next week, we'll start the whole thing over again. Today my patch is located on my lower back, on the right side. Who knows where the husband will place it tomorrow. I'll be doing this patch thing for eight weeks, slowly weaning myself off the nicotine.
You see, when I said up at the top of this overly-windy post, that I love to smoke I meant it. I really do love to smoke. If there was a way to be able to smoke and not be addicted to it, I'd love it. Unfortunately, that's not the case. But there really is something so sublime about smoking. Just the act of pulling one out of a pack, putting it in your mouth, then setting fire to it, while taking a long pull is a beautiful thing. It's partly the method and partly just taking the time to complete a small ritual that makes it so sublime. Those of you who have never smoked, I'm sure, are gagging right now and are only focusing on the bit about inhaling. That's fine. I don't like to go camping or enjoy shitting in the woods, either, which I'm sure are some of your favorite things. Potayto, Pohtato. Live and let live, etc. ad nauseam ad infinitum. But if some of you have ever smoked, you know what I'm talking about. Smoking is a calming thing. It's an act wholly unto itself that, if you bother to appreciate it, is a beautiful experience. I won't say it's religious, but it's awfully close. It makes you slow down. It makes you take your time. It helps you to experience pleasure in small doses. It's lovely.
Unfortunately, though, it's also addictive. Which is what I'm trying to rid myself of. The addiction. I've been smoking for ten years and eight months. I've been toying the with notion of quitting for a while now, but it was Pawlenty who got me to quit. Not only is the Governor of the State of Minnesota too chicken to call this health impact fee what it is---a tax---he's funding education spending out of it! Hence, you can't even call it a "health impact fee" because the money is going to education, not to keeping health costs down. This, I think we can all agree, is not fiscally responsible. So, Tim, in an effort to show you what fiscal responsibility is, I quit smoking. I can't afford to keep paying $3.95 per pack---because, of course Phillip Morris took this momentous opportunity to raise prices by $0.30 per pack---so I quit. It's pretty simple: if you can't afford it, you don't buy it. Right? That's what we have to do in our everyday lives. Why shouldn't you have to do the same, Tim?
Now, if you like irony, you should know that the State of Minnesota is paying for my patches. All you have to do is call the QuitLine and tell them you don't have health insurance and they'll rush the patches right to your door. I lied to get them to pay for it. I think it's only fair since the governor keeps lying to me.
Anyway, I suppose I should warn you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, that I might be overly cranky over the next couple of weeks. This crankiness might result in much meanness, or it might result in hilarity. Who the hell knows what's going to happen? I've never tried to quit before and while the patch is giving off the nicotine I need, I'm having some issues with keeping my hands busy. I'm a fidgeter by nature and the smoking took care of those fidgets. I'm losing that, though, and while I keep taking a break to throw a tennis ball around, I'm somewhat at a loss because I'm losing that thing that always made me slow down and take a look around. So, long story short: look out.
I would also like to add that I'm closing comments on any posts related to my effort to quit smoking. I don't want any email, either. I'm sure a few of you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, would love to cheer me on through all of this because you're good people and you're thrilled by my decision to become a non-smoker again. Well, thank you for that, but just send me happy thoughts through the ether, ok? I don't know how to say this nicely, so I'm just going to say it: it's condescending as hell when a non-smoker or an ex-smoker tells a smoker who's in the process of quitting that, "they can do it! just keep going! resist the urges! It'll get better, I promise! think of all the money you'll save!" and so on and so forth. I know you don't mean for it to be condescending, but it is. As hell.
You are a non-smoker. The way I see it, particularly right now, this means you're the enemy. Sorry, but if all smokers are the enemy for anti-smoking zealots, it's more than fair for me to lump you in with them. Even if you despise their tactics as much as I do, if you've ever declared that you do so like a non-smoking restaurant that's only non-smoking because they've been forced to go that route by the government, well, you've placed yourselves squarely with the anti-smoking zealots. You've benefitted directly from their actions. I don't see why you should get a pass. Sorry, but that's just the way it goes. Doesn't feel so good to be demonized that way, does it? But fair's fair. You're just going to have to deal with it. I've taken more than my fair share of crap from non-smokers over the years. I've listened to your fake coughing when you've walked past me, where if you'd just had the balls to ask me to put it out, I would have. I've listened to non-smokers whine about the smell of smoke in their clothes after they go to the bars. I've listened to windy lectures about how dirty it is when smokers stub their butts out on the sidewalk and walk on, while deliberately ignoring the fact that outdoor ashtrays are almost an extinct species, and that, ahem, it's generally a bad idea to throw something that's just been on fire into a trash can. I've listened to non-smokers think that the best way to balance budgets is to tax smokers. I've been told I have no right to mind my own business, in other words. You non-smokers have put your nose in my business for years, implying that I didn't know what was best for me, so you were going to take care of it for me. So, I certainly hope you non-smokers will respect it when I tell you to mind your own business and spare me the condescending comments. I'm a non-smoker now. I've gained that right, haven't I? Right now, I feel like I'm crossing over to the enemy and I most assuredly don't want to be patted on the head and told I'm being a good little girl while I'm doing so.
Ok, sorry for that, but it's just the way I feel.
Posted by Kathy at August 15, 2005 01:58 PM | TrackBack