January 8, 2003

• Sometimes I forget that I quit smoking and wish for one of those little Dutch Master's cigars with the plastic tips. They come about 4 or 5 to the pack, and in a couple of different flavors, if I remember correctly.
  
  I started smoking when I was about 14 - sneaking them from my parents or grandmother, all of whom smoked like chimneys.
  
  In college, I had a guy friend who had such a baby face it was silly. I told him that if he'd grow a beard, I'd switch to a pipe. He never did grow that beard.
  
  By the time I was 18, I was a pack-a-day girl. At 19, when I was pregnant with my first child, my in-laws urged me to quit. So I did. Cold turkey. No problem.
  
  Seriously. No problem. I just stopped.
  
  I didn't pick it up again until seven years later I was working at a book distribution warehouse and ALL my co-workers smoked. Hanging out with them at breaks and lunch gave me the hankering and I'd have an occasional ciggy bummed off one of them.
  
  Despite the fact that my father had only recently died then of lung cancer and emphysema.
  
  I started to recognize that it was getting out of control again when I began buying my own and having the occasional smoke at home, too - always outside so as not to stink up the house. I think it was in this period, too, that I switched first to cigarellos (I may have the name wrong - I'm thinking of the cigarettes that are brown like cigars, but have filters like cigarettes), then tried the slightly larger unfiltered cigars with the plastic tips - good for gnawing on while one smokes.
  
  But when I saw myself buying tobacco products and arguing for smoking in the house, I said, "Too much." and I quit. Again.
  
  I didn't smoke again until after we'd lived in England a while. Everyone there smokes like it's no big deal. There's it's no crime. So I tried the British cigarettes - better than American - and in France, I bought the French cigarettes - much better than American. (The taste is cleaner - I bet the product is purer, but I don't know.)
  
  But then, as we moved back home to America, I quit again, no problem, cold turkey, and haven't looked back.
  
  Except that I occasionally forget and want one. A nice little cigar.
  
  What's the allure? I don't know. The childhood image stuck deep in my brain that adults smoke? The old nicotine habit always pestering me like a giant cigarette following me around, like on those TV commericals? An oral fixation that forces me to have a pen in my mouth while typing, or gum to chew while driving? Hmmm.
  
  Or could it be that it's cold in here, so I lit the Duralog in the fireplace, and smoked up my whole office just prior to blogging.
  
  I'll go with that one.
  
  Now hold on while I go yank the battery out of the smoke alarm.
  

  • 11:15 am
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