Time To Quit Smoking

I was outside smoking with the smoke group in the blasted cold.  Though I smoked my entire Newport, I once again thought it was time to quit smoking and I voiced my opinion.

A co-worker (and friend) told me about the last time she stopped smoking.  She was seventeen and her father had just learned that she smoked, so he invited her to partake with him, giving her a pack of Marlboros.  When she finished her cigarette, she got up to leave but her father told her to sit back down and smoke another.  (Tough love you could call it.  Though, today, they’d call it child abuse).

"I don't want to smoke another one, dad," she said.

"Nope, smoke it," he replied and so she did.

After that one, he made her smoke another and then another and another.  She had to smoke nearly the entire pack of cigarettes until she was so sick that she didn't want to smoke again. 

The other two smokers listened in shock while I laughed because the same thing happened to me when I was about ten.  My grandmother found out that me and my cousin swiped a couple Winston’s.  (Guess she knew how many she had in her pack. :0)

So, grandmother tells my uncle when he picks us up in San Pablo.  On the way home (to San Jose) I notice he’s driving a little fast, but I trust that he knows what he’s doing.  That’s when he slammed on the breaks and we both flew forward.  And then we put our seatbelt on.

At the stop light, he pulls out a pack of Winstons, and I immediately know that we are being set up.  He gave us both a cigarette, and he said, "I hear you-all like to smoke, so smoke." 

"Uncle D, I don't want to smoke," I said.

"Oh, but you wanted to smoke earlier, so light up," he replied in an authoritative tone.

Because he was an ex-military drill instructor and one who would quickly set our butts on fire, I did what I was told.  Then he said his most famous line (or at least to me), "Don't start none.  Won't be none."

My cousin and I sat in the backseat of his car and smoked the entire pack.  Can you say, "Sick as a dog."  I didn't want to see another cigarette again for the rest of my life.

But, I guess my uncle's and my co-worker's father's lesson on smoking was only temporary because here I was today, shivering in my winter coat and gloves, taking quick puffs of smoke to calm my nerves.

Still, it’s days like today that I know I have got to quit smoking.