Collegiate Times

I carried a lighter around with me since I was 10 years old.

Bic, Zippo, an occasional Scripto or a book of Chevron matches that always seemed to have gotten wet wherever they stored them. I always carried it in my left pocket with whatever else I could stuff into a pair of Dickies. It was a Swiss Army Knife. I could do anything with it. That is just how it was.

Then, about two months ago, after smoking on and off for 10 years -- I quit.

I had been smoking for nearly half of my life and really didn't have anything to show for it. I really wouldn't be that out of breath when walking to random places -- well at least what my out-of-shape body would allow, of course -- and when you do something for years on end you get used to things you would normally find uncomfortable. I didn't realize I was spending a hundred bucks a month on tobacco, either. As I said, when you do something for years on end you get used to things you would normally find uncomfortable, which is why the smell of cigarette smoke doesn't bring back memories because you don't even notice it's there when you have one in your mouth.

There is always a way to get cigarettes. My friends and I stole them from storeowners who were stupid enough to let us near the cigarette racks. There is nothing like getting caught stealing cigarettes and sitting in a jail cell while your mom just stands there with that "what the hell were you thinking" look draped over her disappointed and disgusted face. There are enough 18-year-olds in the world who will buy minors cigarettes, as well. So that base was covered, especially in high school when a quarter or more of the student body was throwing cigarette butts as fast as Morris and Reynolds could supply them. Then, when you get the physique, and guts, to walk into a convenience store or a head shop and ask the cashier for your first pack of the same stuff that killed the Marlboro Man, you got yourself another way to get a pack or two.

There is always a way to get cigarettes.

So I smoked for a while and I enjoyed it every day for quite some time. Nothing really bothered me about it. Not the picture of a cancerous lung sitting next to the soft pink texture of a normal one in a health textbook -- in fact, the first thing that popped into my brain was, "Hey, where did you get the good one from? Oh, let me guess. A dead guy, right?" Who did or did not die of smoking? The reeducation of parents, teachers and the T.V. didn't faze me a bit, either. Who cares about a girl dipped in tar immortalized in a poster on a school nurses wall right next to the bowl of Halls. I can't really say that my friends were hindering me from smoking since they were hanging out behind gas stations and abandoned banks with me -- smoking cigarettes and causing a little bit of havoc when we got the chance, of course, because that is just what happened when I was a teenager.

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