I'm at the point I can't even stand it when a smoker sits next to me on the train!
ComicbookMan sometimes donates blood up the corner at the American Legion Post. Anyone can go in to donate blood, but to hang out, you gotta join, and because you have to become a member of the Legion to hang out, their bar is considered a "private club." That means they don't have to restrict smoking. When he comes home from donating, he goes right into the shower, and his clothes go downstairs to be washed. They want me to donate, too, but there's no way I could survive being in there long enough.
when I was about five or six Dad -- lighting up early one morning -- realised that every time he lit up I started asthma-coughing. He quit that morning and never picked up a cigarette ever again. He never lost the craving. But about four years ago, he told me that the realisation that he was hurting me and stopping had saved his life since he probably would have died in his 40s. My best mate died, Aug 2007, of a brain tumour linked to smoking.
When I see someone smoking -- I feel sorry for them. And as I pick up speed and hold my breath, I think stupid pastime; you're killing yourself and hurting people around you.
When my sister and I were in the single digits in age, my dad used to argue with us on long car trips when we told him his smoking nauseated us and begged him to crack open a window (we'd long since stopped trying to get him to actually stop smoking.) He accused us, little kids that we were, of trying to control him and insisted we were fine, and should stop telling him what to do. YEAH, NOT BITTER AT ALL!
It's been my experience that the smokers in my life have been... I dunno, somewhat delusional? Self-indulgent? Full of themselves? Had a HUGE blind spot when it came to smoking? *sigh* My father quit in the late 70s when he got bronchial pneumonia and his doctor told him he'd die if he didn't stop -- too late to help me, I was already a stone asthmatic and on my third doctor by then. I'm seeing another in a series of ENT doctors a month from now in the last week of December; I'm hoping my Christmas prezzie will be someone who can help me with this constant PND I've had since 1967.
I'm prone to upper respiratory infections, and I've often wondered if it was because my father was a chain smoker. (Oddly - or not so oddly! - enough I've never been tempted to take up the habit because seeing it so close at hand as I was growing up I realised what a distinctly unglamorous habit it was.)
I had a sudden moment of realization at how big a cultural shift had occurred last Christmas dinner - a room full of ten adults and not a single cigarette in sight. Back when I was growing up at least half the adults would have been smokers, and everyone else would have accommodated them.
I'm prone to upper respiratory infections, and I've often wondered if it was because my father was a chain smoker.
Yep, every allergist and ENT guy I've had has told me that it's widely accepted in medical circles that heavy parental smoking = kids prone to upper resp. infections and worse. Now we have a low rumble of people calling it child abuse here in the liberal state of Massachusetts, and I wonder if there's going to be some sort of movement to make it illegal to smoke near your kids.
I love the cultural shift. When I started working in offices, I had a woman who smoked at her desk behind me. In fact, while I don't think they meant to do it, it seemed as if the smokers in any office I worked in would evenly space themselves around the joint so as to leave no area un-smoked-in. Even nice offices had a dingy look to them as all that cigarette smoke coated the walls. It's a lot easier to keep offices clean without smokers.
I spent ages four-ten trying to convince my mother to quit smoking (I learned to read at age three and read an unhealthy number of women's magazines that talked about the dangers of smoking). She quit when I was ten -- 26 years ago -- and reports she still has the occasional craving. Nicotine is insidious.
Also, when I worked at the ad agency, my boss told me once about a longtime employee who retired, in the era when it was still legal to smoke in the office. The ceiling tiles above his cubicle were stained such a dark yellow-brown from the cigarettes that they had to be replaced. You can only imagine what his lungs looked like. *shudders*
To this day, my dad craves cigarettes like mad and he quit in the 70s! Conversely you have someone like my mother who seems to have no addiction problem at all: she can take it or leave it alone. She had no problem whatsoever quitting smoking when he did, and recently smoked a cigarette in front of my father just for fun, then put it out half-smoked and hasn't had one since. He cursed her, admiringly. (They have a complicated relationship.)
When I was a kid, we'd pull down the visor over the driver's seat of my dad's car to show the difference between what the ceiling used to look like before the advent of my dad and his 2.5-pack-a-day habit. There'd be this perfect outline of the visor in the yellow stain. Now they don't even make cars with ash trays anymore!
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ComicbookMan sometimes donates blood up the corner at the American Legion Post. Anyone can go in to donate blood, but to hang out, you gotta join, and because you have to become a member of the Legion to hang out, their bar is considered a "private club." That means they don't have to restrict smoking. When he comes home from donating, he goes right into the shower, and his clothes go downstairs to be washed. They want me to donate, too, but there's no way I could survive being in there long enough.
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When I see someone smoking -- I feel sorry for them. And as I pick up speed and hold my breath, I think stupid pastime; you're killing yourself and hurting people around you.
Reply
It's been my experience that the smokers in my life have been... I dunno, somewhat delusional? Self-indulgent? Full of themselves? Had a HUGE blind spot when it came to smoking? *sigh* My father quit in the late 70s when he got bronchial pneumonia and his doctor told him he'd die if he didn't stop -- too late to help me, I was already a stone asthmatic and on my third doctor by then. I'm seeing another in a series of ENT doctors a month from now in the last week of December; I'm hoping my Christmas prezzie will be someone who can help me with this constant PND I've had since 1967.
Reply
I had a sudden moment of realization at how big a cultural shift had occurred last Christmas dinner - a room full of ten adults and not a single cigarette in sight. Back when I was growing up at least half the adults would have been smokers, and everyone else would have accommodated them.
Reply
Yep, every allergist and ENT guy I've had has told me that it's widely accepted in medical circles that heavy parental smoking = kids prone to upper resp. infections and worse. Now we have a low rumble of people calling it child abuse here in the liberal state of Massachusetts, and I wonder if there's going to be some sort of movement to make it illegal to smoke near your kids.
I love the cultural shift. When I started working in offices, I had a woman who smoked at her desk behind me. In fact, while I don't think they meant to do it, it seemed as if the smokers in any office I worked in would evenly space themselves around the joint so as to leave no area un-smoked-in. Even nice offices had a dingy look to them as all that cigarette smoke coated the walls. It's a lot easier to keep offices clean without smokers.
Reply
Also, when I worked at the ad agency, my boss told me once about a longtime employee who retired, in the era when it was still legal to smoke in the office. The ceiling tiles above his cubicle were stained such a dark yellow-brown from the cigarettes that they had to be replaced. You can only imagine what his lungs looked like. *shudders*
Reply
When I was a kid, we'd pull down the visor over the driver's seat of my dad's car to show the difference between what the ceiling used to look like before the advent of my dad and his 2.5-pack-a-day habit. There'd be this perfect outline of the visor in the yellow stain. Now they don't even make cars with ash trays anymore!
Reply
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