To follow up my post on one of the proudest things I've ever done, I might as well talk about one of the stupidest.
In my case, I started smoking when I was 23. If that's not idiotic, I don't know what is. I mean, it's not like I had a bunch of Catholic school thugs around me in the boys bathroom pressuring me into smoking a Pall Mall.
I've been in smoker denial ever since my first puff. I run and stay relatively fit, but I continue to smoke a few cigarettes whenever I drink. Or get bored at work. Or when I'm on a road trip. Or... you get the point.
So, I guess that makes me a social smoker. Whatever. I guess everyone needs to be in a group, and the guidelines for "nonsmokers" are too strict for me right now.
As someone who's able to see the other side of things right now, it's amusing to somehow be grouped in with today's social witch hunt for the evil smokers. Somehow, nowadays, lighting up a Marlboro is grounds for villainy. Try asking for an ashtray at Starbucks sometime, and they'll look at you like you're Adolf Hitler.
What's really funny is how coffee and smoking were almost synonymous 50 years ago. Like Dennis Leary says, that's exactly what people were about: smoking, coffee and more coffee. Today, everything is changing. Where once you could sit in your cubicle with a lit cigar, now you're relegated to a smoking area outside the fire exit, next to the dumpster. You can't even smoke inside a New York or L.A. bar anymore, as if a thick smog that hangs inside a club isn't connected with the bar atmosphere. Please.
Flip the script,...
But, cigaretteshavechanged over the last fifty years. Today, smoking advertisements almost seem strange to look at. You usually have several healthy-looking people smiling about life, probably engaged in some outdoorsy activity with cigarettes in hand. You never seem to see the smoke from the cigarette or the teeth stains,... just happy, wonderful people having happy, wonderful times.
The illusion of pleasure and enjoyment has been long removed from smoking. People do it today for their own reasons - not because they connect smoking with fun or enjoyment, but because they connect smoking with a physical urge, a personal conviction.
Still, it's just as ridiculous to consider smoking an act of evil as it is to see cigarettes as an instrument of style and fun. You can't kid smokers or nonsmokers; they both realize how disgusting and harmful cigarettes are.
When I quit... or should I say, now that I'm quitting, there is nothing different about my affiliation with the smokers and nonsmokers of the world. Smoke if you got them, or don't,... whatever. I still think the one thing more annoying than cigarette smoke is the one person who always flips out and whines about cigarette smoke. Sure, second-hand smoke may be harmful, but it's not nearly as irritating as first-hand whining.
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