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I'm so tired. I got to bed late, and here I am, awake after about four hours of sleep and stinking of cigarettes.
Although I have never held a cigarette between my lips, never let smoke curl hot and dry down into my lungs, I have been a second-hand smoker since the mid-70s. I have no intention of taking even a single drag off a cigarette, but every now and then, when a pack lies open on the table in front of me, part of me is tempted. Lost in other thoughts, I've come to myself realizing one hand is halfway to the packet and the other hand is clutching a lighter. When this happens, my friends look at me with eyebrows raised in surprise. When this happens, I wonder just what the hell it is I am doing. I have vowed to never smoke.
The acrid, eye-burning smell of burning cigarettes has many associations for me. As a little girl, I'd often visit my chain-smoking next door neighbours. Their fingers were dark with nicotine stains, and most evenings, the air in their farmhouse was a yellow-grey haze. I liked being with them. I'd sit with them in their kitchen and listen to their stories. Guy talked about hunting and the war. He was an excellent shot, and would show me his gun collection. Christine gossiped about people I never met. She introduced me to my first grown-up books (Victoria Holt's gothic romances, and Alice Walker's The Colour Purple). We'd watch John Wayne movies together. Their voices were gravelly, their speaking punctuated by juicy, meaty coughs. Christine's cough was the heaviest, and when she was diagnosed with lung cancer, she only quit smoking when she was dead.
After that, I wasn't around heavy smokers very much for a long time. In university, my only friend who smoked was Mike, and he'd sit across from me in Mexican restaurants blowing smoke rings at my face. He always was an asshole....
After graduation, everything changed. I had no friends who smoked. I didn't go to bars, and my lungs lost their tolerance. When I was first diagnosed with asthma, I was very sick. I couldn't walk even a block without wheezing, couldn't say more than a few words without coughing. The thought of cigarettes filled me with dread. Lit or unlit, I thought they might kill me. Just the smell of a freshly-opened pack was enough to clamp my lungs shut, sear my throat, and make me cough until I was certain my eyes would burst. And if someone with a lit-up cigarette passed by, it was much worse. My coughing fits were so long, so violent I just wanted to die. I didn't dare leave the house without my ventolin puffer. I knew I might not make it back.
And then one day it just stopped hurting. Several of my new friends smoke, and I sit around a table for hours with them every week playing games, anointed by the fumes of no-name cigarettes. My lungs don't rebel. In fact, the asthma specialist I'm seeing is astonished at the progress I've been making; the rate of improvement is unusual in its rapidity.
I've come full circle. I associate the smell of smoke with friends and good times. Intellectually, I'm prepared to associate it with phlegmy coughs and slow death again. Just not for a long while, ok?
Although I have never held a cigarette between my lips, never let smoke curl hot and dry down into my lungs, I have been a second-hand smoker since the mid-70s. I have no intention of taking even a single drag off a cigarette, but every now and then, when a pack lies open on the table in front of me, part of me is tempted. Lost in other thoughts, I've come to myself realizing one hand is halfway to the packet and the other hand is clutching a lighter. When this happens, my friends look at me with eyebrows raised in surprise. When this happens, I wonder just what the hell it is I am doing. I have vowed to never smoke.
The acrid, eye-burning smell of burning cigarettes has many associations for me. As a little girl, I'd often visit my chain-smoking next door neighbours. Their fingers were dark with nicotine stains, and most evenings, the air in their farmhouse was a yellow-grey haze. I liked being with them. I'd sit with them in their kitchen and listen to their stories. Guy talked about hunting and the war. He was an excellent shot, and would show me his gun collection. Christine gossiped about people I never met. She introduced me to my first grown-up books (Victoria Holt's gothic romances, and Alice Walker's The Colour Purple). We'd watch John Wayne movies together. Their voices were gravelly, their speaking punctuated by juicy, meaty coughs. Christine's cough was the heaviest, and when she was diagnosed with lung cancer, she only quit smoking when she was dead.
After that, I wasn't around heavy smokers very much for a long time. In university, my only friend who smoked was Mike, and he'd sit across from me in Mexican restaurants blowing smoke rings at my face. He always was an asshole....
After graduation, everything changed. I had no friends who smoked. I didn't go to bars, and my lungs lost their tolerance. When I was first diagnosed with asthma, I was very sick. I couldn't walk even a block without wheezing, couldn't say more than a few words without coughing. The thought of cigarettes filled me with dread. Lit or unlit, I thought they might kill me. Just the smell of a freshly-opened pack was enough to clamp my lungs shut, sear my throat, and make me cough until I was certain my eyes would burst. And if someone with a lit-up cigarette passed by, it was much worse. My coughing fits were so long, so violent I just wanted to die. I didn't dare leave the house without my ventolin puffer. I knew I might not make it back.
And then one day it just stopped hurting. Several of my new friends smoke, and I sit around a table for hours with them every week playing games, anointed by the fumes of no-name cigarettes. My lungs don't rebel. In fact, the asthma specialist I'm seeing is astonished at the progress I've been making; the rate of improvement is unusual in its rapidity.
I've come full circle. I associate the smell of smoke with friends and good times. Intellectually, I'm prepared to associate it with phlegmy coughs and slow death again. Just not for a long while, ok?
