Up In Smoke... That's Where My Money Goes...

But at least it isn’t illegal smoke… It’s just the normal cigarette smoke of Marlboro Ultra Lights…

Today is the day of the 29th Great American Smokeout. A day for people, like me, all over the country to stop smoking for at least 24 hours, and preferably for the rest of our lives. It’s a good idea. Let’s face it, smoking kills… It’s expensive… $4.54 for one pack of cigarettes over in Ohio I found out the other day when I was there… Let’s see, if I lived in Ohio, and I only buy by the pack (…which wastes even more money vs. by the carton), and I smoke about one pack per day… $1616.24 at least per year. That sounds ludicrous doesn’t it? Spending that much money to more than likely cause my own untimely demise?

I mentioned before that my Dad died ten years ago. The cause? Respiratory Failure… A nice euphuism for saying he died of emphysema brought about by smoking for more than fifty years, and when I say smoking, I mean chain smoking three or more packs a day. The last week of his life, he was on a respirator. The tube was down his throat so he couldn’t talk. A few days after I got back home they tried to remove him from the respirator and told him that if they couldn’t get him off of it, most likely he would never be able to breath on his own again. He managed to stay off for about ten minutes. He sat there on the side of the bed in the ICU ward, bent over, gasping for life. Needless to say, he wasn’t in a talkative mood or condition. They were starting to put the tube back into his mouth when he put his hand up to block it, he looked at me, and said “…I love you son.” Then he pointed to my shirt pocket where my cigarettes were and said, “…Get off those things while you still can.” Those were the last words my Dad ever said to anyone. He died two days later…

Well, needless to say, I still smoke. I still enjoy lighting up when having a good conversation and some coffee, or when I’m sitting at a Denny’s at night having coffee and reading a book, or when I need to think, or when I’m stressed… Even knowing what it is doing to my health, I like it. It is a strange relationship I have with my cigarettes.

The simple fact is, I need to quit. I would like for my kids to have me around longer than their 20’s or 30’s. I don’t want to harm their health, so I don’t smoke in the house, I don’t smoke in the car, I don’t set us all in the smoking section when I go out. I remember how it used to be when I was a kid… Dad smoked in the house, the car, everywhere. Of course, you could still wander down the isles of our local IGA shopping for groceries while smoking. Everywhere you went… Movies, the hardware store, THE HOSPITAL, the workplace… Smoking… How times change.

So today, I’ll smoke a few extra cigarettes just because it is the Great American Smokeout… But soon… I need to quit… I want to quit… I will quit… I just hope I do it on my own terms and not because Thanatos is there to tell me I’m quitting…


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