MY ILLUSTRIOUS CIGARETTE SMOKING CAREER...

...Ten Minutes, total, over 30 years ago...

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I was in a grocery store the other day, and I passed a locked cigarette case, and happened to glance at the price for a certain brand of cigarette that was being sold by the carton: $51.49. Over 50 bucks for a carton of smokes. No wonder they're being kept under lock and key, I guess. Oh, how the times have changed; I remember when Mom would send me to the grocery store for milk, bread, and a pack of whatever-brand-of-low-tar-cigarette she thought was doing her the least damage...as I recall, a pack ran about 30 or 40 cents back in the '60s and I really haven't kept up on cigarette prices, since I don't smoke. Dad was a Pall Mall man. Sometimes I'd get sent to the store to buy cigarettes for him as well. Most of the time, my sister and I would head out on our bikes to the neighborhood grocery store, and along with the cigarettes, we'd be allowed to buy a little something for ourselves; we'd either get a couple candy bars each, or if it were summer, we'd go for the "Mr. Freeze" frozen 'pops', which were about a foot long. What a great way to beat the heat. And a lot tastier than cigarettes!

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I remember the cigarette ads we'd see on TV, about how the different brands all had a unique 'taste'. One cigarette commercial actually Flirted with the viewer: It was an ad for Doral cigarettes, in which a cartoon cigarette would writhe, slither and otherwise manipulate itself while singing, "Taste Me, Taste Me; come on and Taste Me"...with come-ons like that, no wonder people were getting hooked. Anyway, waay back in the day, I'm sure both my sister and I probably smoked quite a few 'equivalents' of packs of cigarettes; invariably at the dinner table, Mom and Dad would both light up. I remember having to periodically fan the air in front of me with my hands as best as I could while we ate. Thankfully, the big window near the dinner table could be opened with ease (we had those easy-opening "Pella" windows), and so the smoke would dissipate. If it was a cool evening, we'd shiver a bit, but at least we got Fresh Air.

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Mom and Dad tried to quit smoking all their lives, and trying, over the years, various anti-smoking aids. One of the first wean-off-cigarettes devices was a package of fairly large pink pills, called "Nicoban". You could pop one in your mouth, theoretically, and not want for a cigarette. Like all kids, I was curious about stuff, and since I'd heard that 'Nicoban' tablets tasted like cigarettes, I asked Dad if he could break off a bit of a Nicoban tablet so I, too, could coat my tongue with the Same Sensation as smoking a cigarette; I wondered what I'd been missing. Dad obviously didn't want me to start smoking anytime soon, so he gave me about half a tablet, thinking perhaps it would be a good deterrent, just in case I ever thought about smoking on down the line...In went the 'Nicoban' fragment into my mouth, and Oh My Garsh...it was as if someone had lit up a Charcoal Briquet and stuffed it into my yap...the idea was to let the 'Nicoban' tablet stay in the mouth long enough to take away any annoying yearn for a cigarette. Me, not being a smoker, well, it was Instant "Ptoooey!!!" I spit that Nicoban Fragment out within five seconds. AAACK!!!

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Later on in life, while studying for Final Exams in College, I pulled an "all-nighter", and by around midnight, I needed a break. So I went out into the hall where the Pop, Candy and Cigarette machines were, and decided to there and then to buy a Pack of Cigarettes. They say College Finals can do crazy things to a person; it's true, it's true! I was 24 at the time, had never smoked. I can't recall which brand, but I tried smoking one, and got to where I could inhale lightly and blow the smoke out of my nose; heck, I could even make smoke rings! After that, I semi-smoked my way thru a few more cigarettes, not breathing in too far, and lo and behold, they did begin to have, not a taste really, more like an aroma. I'd finish a cigarette as best as I could, then smoke another. And another, and another, as the old Nicotine Craving monster thought to himself, "HA HA HAAAAA, ANOTHER VICTIM!!!" It looked like the Giant Tobacco Companies would soon be making tons of money offa me as well as the countless hundreds-of-thousands out there who were all seeking Tastebud Nirvana thru smoking. There was No Stopping Me Now, no-siree...

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I decided, on the next cigarette, I was gonna Really Taste It, just like all those people in the cigarette ads did. I actually tried to deeply-inhale the smoke into my Lungs, and talk about an Instantaneous Breathing Rupture...it felt like something blew up inside my chest, followed by "hack, hack, hack, wheeze, cough, cough, cough". Oh, my Gawd. My face was red; my eyebrows were sweating, and if I'd coughed any harder, my eyeballs woulda popped right outta my head. I know a lot of folks come down with emphysema, lung cancer, and other assorted respiratory maladies, and the question I must ask is, how much does one have to smoke to adversely affect their lungs? Because, based on my reaction to that cigarette, there was no way I could commit smoke-i-cide. I suppose that on down the line, something else will get me, but it won't be cigarettes. Because, way back when I almost ruptured myself from deeply inhaling cigarette smoke, is also when I quit. I'd been smoking for ten MINUTES. No thanks. Not for me. But you know, it really wasn't the coughing fit I had, it was more that I was beginning to (almost) LIKE the cigarette 'aroma'; could that be the 'taste' which smokers referred to? That certain something by which people became addicted to cigarettes? And then I thought of how many times my folks tried to quit and couldn't. With that, I placed the still-almost-full pack of cigarettes on the floor, ground my heel into them, and tossed 'em away.

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Back in the '80s, I saw the younger brother of a 1972 high school classmate; he was playing pool in a smoky bar with a bunch of his friends, and he chainsmoked all night. I knew that he'd been smoking since high school...ten years later, in the '90s, while as a cabbie, I was making a medical delivery to the hospital, when the elevator door opened, and there he was in a wheelchair, being pushed by his parents. He was wearing one of those oxygen machines. About half a year after that, he passed away. Nine out of Ten doctors will agree: Cancer Cures Smoking.