I remember starting to smoke...
I had tried a puff or two of other people's cigarette's when I was in High School, but I had never bought my own pack. To me, the level of your addiction was always related to whether you paid for the goods or not. I was only smoking vicariously through other people's habits...
...until I got back from that drama tour I wrote about in the previous entry. I had a summer job lined up, selling T-shirts outside of Expo 86 in Vancouver. I had a roommate and we had a place to live, a little travel trailer in the backyard of a Salvation Army preacher. And I no longer had any reason not to smoke, since I no longer counted as valid anything I'd been taught about behavior and morality.
The first pack of cigarettes I bought myself was More Menthol's. I figured they'd look good with my red fingernail polish. (It is all about looking good, isn't it?) I LOVED how they looked. I'd smoke while I walked to work, admiring myself in shop windows as I passed by. I'd smoke while I drank cups of coffee, learning to blow smoke rings and French inhale. I would smoke at the Luv Affair while I danced. I smoked as I waited for the bus. I loved smoking!
It didn't take long to become addicted all on my own, without any of my friends to blame it on or bum smokes from. Of course, back in 1986, you could buy a pack of smokes for $1.50 at the cheap smoke shop. I soon switched from More's to Peter Stuyvesant's, a Dutch cigarette, when I could find them...and if I couldn't find them, Player's would do in a pinch. I pretty much smoked non-stop for at least four years after that.
5 comments:
Cigarettes really do seem to be all about the looks. One of my friends decided she wanted to try out a cigarette, to see if she looked cool. She stood alone in her room and lit one up...and posed several ways to see if she looked cool...she decided she didn't and hasn't smoked since.
Virginia Slims, quit when price reached 75 cents/pack in '81ish.
Also, cigarette ads were all over the place and the fun/cool tone of them remind me of the current Mountain Do ads. Who wouldn't want to smoke?
"Dew"
I started smoking for appearence (I guess) when I was 15.However, I first tried it when I was about 7. We would go to the SPCA to look at the dogs in prison and find butts in the parking lot. We would light them and ride around on our bikes being cool. Why did we think it was cool?
I gave up cigarettes in 1987 ($1.25 for 20 pack) for good. I've smoked cigars for fun for years now. I don't inhale, don't crave them and I no longer care if I'm cool or not. My coolness comes thru who I hang out with :-)
Dad died from emphezema(?) 25+ years AFTER he quit.He wasn't cool.
I wonder what would happen if the Gov. outlawed smoking?
I've always said there is NOTHING more fashionable than a beautiful woman smoking her head off. I only wish it didn't make them smell so awful. And those long brown cigarettes are so...so...so what? Hmmm, I shouldn't say stupid. After all, Paula used to smoke them. Perhaps if I just said different. That's what girls at my high school said if they wanted to indicate a guy was a complete loser without coming out and saying it: "Yeah, he's different (yuck)
Trouble is I can't really say rude things about smoking because I did exactly the same thing. Oh well. Forget it.
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