S-s-smokin'!

There is nothing sexier than a beautiful lady raising a cigarette to her lips, tendrils of smoke beckoning me closer through a hazy bar. Maybe she'll clear her throat a lot, occasionally cough something into a handkerchief. The most important thing is the dry, raspy voice, and the first signs of the leather her skin will become years earlier than natural. That is the epitome of hot.

I've never been a fan of smoking. I think pop culture and my parents actually succeeded in that department. I remember an ad that ran back in the ‘80s. A boy is making his way through a crowded party. His eyes meet an exceptionally cute blond across the room. She brushes her hair across her ear and shyly looks away. He plays it cool, talks to his friends, but continues stealing glances. She does the same. Finally, he works up the nerve to approach this goddess and she chooses this moment to take a puff of her cigarette. The boy looks crushed as he lowers his head and turns around, leaving her embarrassed and disappointed as the commercial fades to black.

My mom's had asthma for most of her life. I've never known my uncles, her older brothers, as anything but mature and dignified adults, but she's told me horror stories of how they teased her when they were teenagers and she was a little girl. They had just started smoking, a habit they thankfully didn't carry into adulthood, and used to throw a blanket over her and blow smoke into it. Whether it was the cause or simply the trigger, her asthma manifested not long after. My mom’s always had an acute sense of smell, and was very sensitive to even a hint of smoke. If I'd go into my friend's house two doors down, where both parents were smokers, she knew. If I evaded her keen olfactory ability, once she started wheezing it would be a matter of time before I was confronted. I was forbidden to play in that house, and if I ever went to a bar when I was older and in college, she would know too. I had to go directly to the basement to put my smoky clothes in the washing machine immediately, or I wasn’t getting upstairs.

Clearly the circumstances of my childhood, the trips to the hospital when my mom had particularly bad attacks, stayed with me. I never had so much as a desire or a curiosity to smoke. At one of the Christmas parties for the first company I worked for, the boss passed around complementary cigars and prodded us all, especially the reluctant ones, to take at least one puff. Of course I choked on it, and it took several glasses of water to rid my mouth of that foul taste. I don't understand the appeal.

Years ago it was different. Commercials showed doctors lighting up after a tough day at the office. Nobody knew about lung cancer or asthma or emphysema or the rest of that fun stuff. I guess the kids of my generation, the ones who scoffed at PSAs and didn't live with asthmatic relatives, must have gotten started trying to look cool. I say smoking never appealed to me, and yet even I enjoyed bubble gum cigarettes, or pretending to smoke a lollipop stick. Somehow, some way, that message got through to us that smoking made us adults. Maybe it was in television shows, if not commercials. George Peppard had his share of stogies clenched between his teeth on The A-team, and looked cool as hell doing it. Lollipops came in handy when I wanted to play Hannibal on the playground. I regret that I didn't understand WHY I got beat up for that, and rightly so, at the time. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

Once people start, the addictive quality takes over, and quitting is difficult, even knowing the cost to both health and wallets. What's more problematic is, for all the fatalities, there are those genetically predisposed not to suffer ill effects. “Look at George Burns; he lived to be 100!” is a defense often proffered by a 78-year-old chain-smoking trumpet player in one of my bands. He'll punctuate most of his sentences with hacking and wheezing. Having made it as far as he has, there would be no point in anyone trying to convince him to quit now. Personally, I've had enough brushes with death not to tip the scales even further against me, especially with my family history. I didn't inherit asthma as far as I know, but I've had some respiratory problems with some colds that were very scary, and I've found myself wheezing whenever I've spent more than an hour or two around secondhand smoke. It’s a shame my dad’s heart condition hasn’t inspired me to eat better, although hopefully the hours of cardio I do in the gym each week are helping me somehow.

Does anyone out there smoke? What factors contributed to you picking up the habit in the first place? Do you wish you could quit? Has anyone tried, and has anyone succeeded? What reasons would you have not to quit?