Life Change #4: Stop Smoking

For me, this one will be easy. Simply put…I DON’T SMOKE. But I figured if you are reading this, you just might, and we best get our arms around this one right away. I am told, though I have no first hand knowledge, that stopping smoking takes time, dedication, will power, support, luck, nicoderm patches, several relapses, and in the end, failure is the most likely result. It seems to me simple…..it takes matches (or a lighter) to smoke. Hide the matches, discard the lighter. And there you have it…you cannot smoke! Then again, I always thought the best way to achieve gun control was to simply make ammo illegal. Constitution says you can have guns….nothing in here about ammo….

OK, so I am not quite so insensitive. I can hear ice cream call out to me at odd hours of the day or night. I can rationalize that one carton of Haagen-Dazs Swiss Chocolate Almond will not really hurt all that much in the grand scheme of things. I’ll exercise for an hour and then convince myself that “I earned it” and then eliminate any benefit I derived from a 600 calorie work out with a 1200 calorie ice cream binge. Addiction is addiction is addiction. But you should still stop…stuff is killing you, and it is not doing the rest of us much good either

I can scarcely imagine growing up the way I did. My mom smoked….everyone’s mom smoked. They smoked while they drove us around; they smoked while cooking dinner, while eating dinner, and all over the house. They smoked in restaurants, in theaters, on airplanes, at PTA meetings, in bed, in the bathroom…smoke was everywhere. Second hand smoke had a different description back then….we called it “air”. It was in fact the very stuff that we breathed—everything was second hand smoke….such was the prevalence of smoking.

At least now, we have relegated smoking to the back alleys or single occupant vehicles in our midst. Even so, when I pull up behind you in your Honda Accord with the windows down and the smoke billowing out the window, the smell is nauseating. How did I put up with this for so many years?…how did any of us put up with it?…how did smoking become so widely accepted? I want to get out of my car and tell you that I wish you’d roll up the windows, since I have small children in my car and don’t want them breathing that smoke. Probably get punched. Might even deserve it.

My limited experience with smoking came at the age of experimentation...about 13 years old…I stole a few Newport’s from my mom’s purse…getting cigarettes was no big deal…hell they all smoked so many of them so constantly that who would miss a cigarette or two. Cigarettes are so expensive now, that I am guessing a serious smoker knows exactly how many are left in the pack…that makes them hard to steal…and for that reason alone, expensive cigarettes seem like a good idea. Kids can’t steal them as stealthily from their parents.

The first thing I noticed as I lit my first cigarette is that holding a burning object that close to my eyes seemed wrong. In fact it burned…maybe my eyes are too sensitive, or a I smoked “wrong”, but it seemed that the little plume of smoke went right into my eyes, and that was not something I was going to easily grow accustomed to. Then there was the burning sensation in my throat and lungs…the sudden explosive coughing as the body rejected the entire premise of breathing this crap (I did allow myself to use that word, didn’t I?)…and finally, as if that was not enough, there were the spins….that “green around the gills feeling”…which is odd, because I do not believe I own gills…and yet, that description works…I felt like a sick fish. How in the world do people ever come back for cigarette #2 I wondered.

“Oh you get used to it”, I recall a friend, my partner in crime, telling me. “It’s pretty cool once you get the hang of it” he assured me. I think really, he just wanted me to steal more cigarettes from my mom, and he recognized that if I wasn’t interested, the supply chain was shut down. I think I got the second cigarette done. Not sure. All I know is that I simply never came back. I have a ton of bad habits, but happily, the worst, or at least one of the worst, habits is not mine to shed.

Still, tobacco holds some sway over our culture. I was floored when my son, on the occasion of his 18th birthday suggested that we might go out and smoke a cigar together. This is a kid whom I doubt has ever smoked in his life, and even if he had tried cigarettes, he had pretty clearly rejected them as a satisfying alternative to good clean fresh air. Now he wants to smoke a cigar with me?…it seemed sort of retro….like if we were some family of stature in the late 19th century, I’d take him into my drawing room on his 18th birthday and we would smoke cigars while discussing the ways of the world…big leather chairs…a globe...brandy.

I guess I sort of modeled that behavior…from time to time, I have enjoyed (not sure that is the right word, but we will let it be for now) a cigar with a friend…it typically surrounded some sort of uniquely male activity…bachelor parties, poker night, camping trips, scotch drinking…I’d guess a dozen or more times over the past 10 years…so that is what I will be giving up…no more cigars…if only to send a message to my son that even though I CAN smoke a cigar any time I want to, I don’t. And clearly, if I did, my wife would have a thing or two to say about it.

I chewed tobacco on a canoe trip with a bunch of friends from high school and college…seemed ok…easy to spit (anywhere) and if you did swallow a little and had to puke that was easy enough (anywhere). But there were no women with us…I always wondered what it must taste like to kiss someone who chewed tobacco, but since I never met any women who “chewed” I never got that bit of research done. I can imagine though…if kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray, I suppose that kissing a “chewer” is like licking a spittoon. If I had a choice, pass the ashtray…

Spittoons are not as common as say, beer bottles with spit and chew debris coagulated at the bottom…that is why in certain parts of the country, where chewing is prevalent, you never ever set down your beer bottle, and if you do, well, you go get a new beer…never risk picking up a bottle that might have been spit in…

However, despite these reservations, chewing tobacco is a much more personal thing to do than smoking…no second hand smoke…second hand spit may be disgusting, but no one suggests we are being killed by it…I’d rather be around a person chewing than a person smoking. And thanks, I’ll get my own beer!

So this bad habit is called “Stop Smoking”…and since I don’t smoke, perhaps it is time to look at the deeper meaning behind this…notice I did not say “Quit” smoking. No, I have to “Stop” smoking. Have I ever lifted a finger to keep a person from smoking? Nope (See Life Change #48: I Avoid Confrontation). Though there have been many times when I have been around someone who is smoking and it bothers me, have I ever said anything? If I say nothing, isn’t that sort of endorsing the despicable behavior? I should actually do something to “stop smoking”.

I should come at this somewhat naturally. My father, a life long torturer of smokers, way before it became fashionable, would make these labels on his little DYMO machine and put them all over his car…”NO SMOKING” they cried out in their embossed white on black background 3/8” high sort of way. It was sort of absurdly underwhelming, but he made up for it by putting them everywhere….on the dashboard, by every ashtray, by the cigarette lighter (cars used to have them, before they became “power ports”). It was, as if to suggest, that someone might inadvertently light up a cigarette and before he could utter the phrase, “No Smoking, Please!” a molecule of cigarette smoke might escape and linger in his car. Perhaps he was avoiding confrontation. Didn’t want to be the one to have to tell the poor fool about to light up that this was a no smoking area. In fact, I think my father’s car was the first no smoking area I was ever aware of.

Since my mom smoked, this was an issue of not so little consternation to both of them. On lengthy road trips, she would need to stop for a cigarette. Everyone’s bladder stayed nice and empty, so it wasn’t that great a problem, and she got to ride in the car, mile after mile with the little self adhesive label staring back at her. No Smoking. I recall thinking there was cruelty in the labels…but I am not sure who was more cruel…my dad for placing those labels, or my mother, for continuing to smoke despite the impact it had on his allergies and asthma. I suspect both had somewhat cruel intentions.

My father eventually became intolerant of the lingering odor of cigarettes which was noticeable long after my mom had finished her cigarette, so the road trip ritual was amended to include time to walk around after the last puff, to give the clothes and hair some time to air out. My father gradually made it harder and harder for my mother to smoke. She never fought back She was outnumbered…by this time, my sister and I were aware of the health risks posed by the “cancer sticks” and so she found less and less time, in less and less space to smoke, until eventually she gave up….for good. I can’t help but think it was a sort of gift he gave her. He made her stop…it took 30 years, but smoking eventually became so complicated that it was simply not worthwhile.

Back when everyone smoked, everything smelled of it. But now, with smoking such an outlaw enterprise, the lingering odor is a bit of a telltale. My daughter’s 2nd grade teacher smoked, and she didn’t like her simply because “she stunk all the time”. Everyone knows who smokes and who doesn’t now. So picking them out won’t be hard…making them stop will be difficult.

My son had a great approach back in his “parrot” phase of development. We would always tell him (brainwash him?) that smoking was “stupid”…from as early as he even knew about smoking. So of course, that paid dividends. I was walking with him in town one day, and we went past a rougher looking guy who was smoking while seated at a bench outside a store. “Look dad, that man is STUPID!” he said, with conviction and not the slightest trace of malice…as if simply stating a verifiable and obvious fact, like, “look dad, that guy has red hair”…clearly the dude heard the remark…we were only one or two paces past him….paces which I might add, that quickened after he said it…I never looked back (remember that discomfort with confrontation habit I am saddled with currently?), though to be fair, I think I was more fearful of getting a black eye in front of my son who at that time thought I was almost as cool as I thought I was. But it does bring up a point. Smoking is stupid. Everyone who smokes knows it, and it is the only habit that I can think of that would most gladly be shed by those saddled by it.

Perhaps someone reading these words will opt to quit…and then I will have succeeded on this life change…but just in case, the next smoker I see will hear it from me, or …perhaps I will bring my son along. See, if you quit…one less smoker, that much less smoke and I won’t have to get in your grill—I really do hate conflict.

Somehow, I gotta stop smoking.

Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Four):

Another day of well hydrated exercise sans I Pod. I did have that moment today, where putting on some pants I knew to be, well, snug, I hoped that maybe on Day 4 there would be some change…some easing of the tension of the fabric around my waist. Nope. I noted no reduction in girth. I have uttered the word “shit” on 3 occasions…immediately stopped myself and apologized to the people I was with and explained to them why…they all seemed to harbor doubts about my chances for success…as if to test my patience, two recent canine calling cards have been left on our front lawn. Someone ought to be tackling that nasty habit of letting their dog crap on my lawn, or any lawn, without cleaning it up. Come on people; let’s get YOUR lists started!