I Do Not Smoke
This category crossed my mind recently. More accurately I had wondered if there was such a category and had I already added my own "Me Too". Both were in fact the case it turned out and so I determined to share not so much the why but the how in regard to me being a non-smoker.
In the late 70s the family was uprooted from the "big city" to what was at the time still a quite rural town. And with this move came culture shock. Plucked from the familiar world of private schools and dropped into the vastly different realm of a small town ISD was jarring enough in its own right. Having to discover first hand the dissimilarity of attitudes, upbringing, colloquialisms, and just general day to day life between the urban and the sub-suburban bordered on the disastrous. Nothing could have prepared me for that environment.
So it was that I fell in immediately with two friends who seemed more willing than most to accept an outsider. And I was introduced to a different way of life which included sneaking off to enjoy the natural miracle that is tobacco. I was introduced to Red Man Chewing Tobacco (yes, that was a thing back then) as well as whatever cigarettes could be obtained. Now bear in mind that I grew up in the tail end of an era where tobacco was not yet the enemy of mankind. Attitudes about the myriad products were still locked heavily in the prior century, at least out in the sticks, and dumbass kids could still walk into the gas station or tiny grocery and ask for a pack or two of Marlboro or Kool (my personal choice due to the soothing menthol flavor) and scarcely be challenged. If a child bought cigarettes they must be on behalf of a lazy parent, right?
So here is where I managed to completely fail at becoming addicted to one of the most insidiously addictive substances known to modern man. When introduced to smoking I was offered cigarettes, the means to light them, two good friends to sneak off to secluded places which the small town offered in abundance in which to enjoy our guilty pleasure. I was not, however, instructed on the traditional use of said tobacco product. Much like the chewing tobacco that I would literally chew and spit out, I misinterpreted the intended nature of smoking "according to Hoyle". While my friends were undoubtedly filling their lungs with billows issuing into their mouths from the filter tips of their cigarettes, I was busily puffing away, exhaling smoke and air in quick succession with each inward breath. Yes, you can damn near hyperventilate your cigarettes if you don't know what you are doing!
Couple not exactly inhaling with a constant dread of parental action should I be caught in the act, cigarettes were the infrequent little something I was getting away with when in the company of certain friends or when I could sneak far enough away from prying eyes to indulge a smoke. Even the clever use of a box from Tart n' Tiny candies, which was ideally suited to contain a stash of a few cigarettes, was not ample to provide me certainty that I could get away with this long enough to develop a truly appreciable habit. By high school I had long since given up the pointless pursuit of something that brought more paranoia than pleasure.
Now admittedly I determined in my freshman year of college to follow in my older brother's footsteps and get this smoking thing into my life and bought a pack, without raising a single eyebrow, of my old favorite, Kool. I enjoyed a few cigarettes from that pack out on the campus and even one in the dorm before I realized that I just blew a small portion of my scant college kid budget on something I realized I never truly wanted or needed. There was no peer pressure and certainly no compelling physical need to feed the all-consuming ache for nicotine. I distinctly recall the day I pulled my first adult-purchased pack of cigarettes from my desk drawer, took it out to the dumpster outside the dorm, and crushed it into a useless tangle of paper, cellophane, and tiny flakes of dried tobacco.
In the late 70s the family was uprooted from the "big city" to what was at the time still a quite rural town. And with this move came culture shock. Plucked from the familiar world of private schools and dropped into the vastly different realm of a small town ISD was jarring enough in its own right. Having to discover first hand the dissimilarity of attitudes, upbringing, colloquialisms, and just general day to day life between the urban and the sub-suburban bordered on the disastrous. Nothing could have prepared me for that environment.
So it was that I fell in immediately with two friends who seemed more willing than most to accept an outsider. And I was introduced to a different way of life which included sneaking off to enjoy the natural miracle that is tobacco. I was introduced to Red Man Chewing Tobacco (yes, that was a thing back then) as well as whatever cigarettes could be obtained. Now bear in mind that I grew up in the tail end of an era where tobacco was not yet the enemy of mankind. Attitudes about the myriad products were still locked heavily in the prior century, at least out in the sticks, and dumbass kids could still walk into the gas station or tiny grocery and ask for a pack or two of Marlboro or Kool (my personal choice due to the soothing menthol flavor) and scarcely be challenged. If a child bought cigarettes they must be on behalf of a lazy parent, right?
So here is where I managed to completely fail at becoming addicted to one of the most insidiously addictive substances known to modern man. When introduced to smoking I was offered cigarettes, the means to light them, two good friends to sneak off to secluded places which the small town offered in abundance in which to enjoy our guilty pleasure. I was not, however, instructed on the traditional use of said tobacco product. Much like the chewing tobacco that I would literally chew and spit out, I misinterpreted the intended nature of smoking "according to Hoyle". While my friends were undoubtedly filling their lungs with billows issuing into their mouths from the filter tips of their cigarettes, I was busily puffing away, exhaling smoke and air in quick succession with each inward breath. Yes, you can damn near hyperventilate your cigarettes if you don't know what you are doing!
Couple not exactly inhaling with a constant dread of parental action should I be caught in the act, cigarettes were the infrequent little something I was getting away with when in the company of certain friends or when I could sneak far enough away from prying eyes to indulge a smoke. Even the clever use of a box from Tart n' Tiny candies, which was ideally suited to contain a stash of a few cigarettes, was not ample to provide me certainty that I could get away with this long enough to develop a truly appreciable habit. By high school I had long since given up the pointless pursuit of something that brought more paranoia than pleasure.
Now admittedly I determined in my freshman year of college to follow in my older brother's footsteps and get this smoking thing into my life and bought a pack, without raising a single eyebrow, of my old favorite, Kool. I enjoyed a few cigarettes from that pack out on the campus and even one in the dorm before I realized that I just blew a small portion of my scant college kid budget on something I realized I never truly wanted or needed. There was no peer pressure and certainly no compelling physical need to feed the all-consuming ache for nicotine. I distinctly recall the day I pulled my first adult-purchased pack of cigarettes from my desk drawer, took it out to the dumpster outside the dorm, and crushed it into a useless tangle of paper, cellophane, and tiny flakes of dried tobacco.
