Bill did smoke

More about my life, as if you need the extra thrills:

When he was young, a pretty typical teenager in New Jersey in the late ’70s, he did take up the vile and noxious habit. He followed both his parents, his younger sister, and several close friends into the addiction. This was at age 17, about 14 years after the Surgeon General came out with his landmark report explicitly stating that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer. But Bill had been around the smoke all his life and never really thought of it as so bad.

His first experiment in smoking was at age 13. A few months past a terrific Bar Mitzvah (and into his manhood), one sunny afternoon he was standing in the kitchen with Mom. Who was smoking at the table. Bill looked at the window and then asked her for one to try. She laughed, but he was insistent and she gave one over, even lit it. After two puffs, standing over the sink turned out to be a good location because he began coughing and choking and dropped the burning stick. Mom had a really good laugh then and figured that was one lesson learned. If only.

One Saturday night four years later, while staying the weekend at a friend’s house out on Long Island, he was left alone in the car for a few minutes. Just Bill and a red and white pack of Marlboros. When the friends came back to the car, he was sitting there trying to choke down a few puffs. No way were a few coughs going to deter him from entering that cool world. So he kept at it. The next day he bought his first pack.

At home, standard practice was for dinner to be eaten but before clearing the dishes both adults would have a cigarette while we finished the conversations. Being 17, Bill though of himself as pretty manly so when his folks took out their’s, he reached into his pants pockets and did the same. Even asked his Dad for a light. Of course there was quite a reaction but what could they do? The next night his younger sister, who’d been smoking for about two years already, lit up as well. Amusingly, Sis thought the folks didn’t know about her surrepticiously smoking but of course they did.

Anyway, Bill smoked for several years before kicking the habit. Kicking it for awhile, at least, but in the 24 and a half years since that probably means about half on and half off. He is glad to report that he took his last pull over 16 months ago, on June 12, 2001, and is fairly confident that this time it’s for good.

Most people now regret giving in to the glamour and rebellion. The huge quantities of advertising, the celebrity endorsements, the movies with James Dean looking so cool with a pack rolled up in his sleeve, all made it so hard to resist. Bill’s father, who started smoking at age 12, in 1940 and quit about ten years ago, even now says “Actually, I wish I’d never started. But who knew? It was glamorized so in those days.”

This nostalgia all was inspired by the latest medical news: Nicotine ‘Cooks’ Proteins in the Body. So swell, as if potentially giving ourselves lung cancer wasn’t enough… Another reason to be glad we’ve quit! You have, right? Karl, this question is pointed at you.