SMOKING USED TO BE COOL

SMOKING USED TO BE COOL

It has been four years since I quit smoking for the third and probably last time.  I am glad I have quit, even though I still have ten “quit smoking” pounds to lose.  My breathing is better; I lost that persistent cough that I claimed had nothing to do with smoking and food tastes better, much better, hence the extra ten pounds.

It has been easier to quit smoking this time around for several reasons. 

First, smoking just got way too expensive thanks to all those non-smoking fanatics that pushed up the smoker’s tax.  Those same fanatics made it impossible to smoke at work, in restaurants, the train, airplanes, even bars…all the really cool places, just because they didn’t enjoy the polluting results of my addiction. 

Second, there are just not that many smokers left.  At parties, all the really fun people could always be found outside in the cold feeding their addiction.  When I quit, I still went outside looking for the “fun” people.  Now it seems most of the fun people have also quit.  It is pitiful being outside in the cold all alone.

Most of all, smoking is just not cool anymore.  We used to do such neat things with smoking back when it was cool.

It took weeks of practice, but I learned to snap open my Zippo lighter with one hand, spin the igniting wheel with a finger snap, fire up a smoke, and snap that Zippo shut with a flick of the wrist...COOL!!

 If you didn’t have your Zippo, you learned to bend a paper match out of the book, close the cover and strike it all with one hand…COOL!

Then there was the actual smoking.  You had to learn to blow smoke rings, one inside another.  You blew smoke out really cool straight up in the air, out your nose, or the extra cool out the mouth into the nose French Curl…REALLY COOL!!

We put our butts out cool.  There was the casual no look shoe squish which required a slight toe twist.  If there was an ash tray you had to stub it out just right, and if you had plenty of room to properly clutter the environment, you just flicked it away without a care in the world…COOL!

You had to know how to hold your cigarette.   If you held it at the end of your fingertips you were a lady…or ladylike (if you get my drift).  A dude held it between his thumb and pointy-finger and used his second finger to flick off the ashes.  The other method was to hold the cigarette well down to the second knuckle of the first two fingers, with the thumb as the flicker...COOL!

We could be so suave and gentlemanly when we smoked.  Your best girl just loved it when you lit two at once and then handed one to her filter first…COOL!

 I don’t miss smoking anymore.  I don’t miss the craving when it was inappropriate, I don’t miss the coughing, the staining, the occasional burn marks on my shirts and the dirty looks from non-smokers.

I do miss being cool.