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View From The Middle
I let my butler do it for me! No, no, no! I'm kidding! It's true, though: the part about being cigarette free for lo this much time. I never thought I would or could do it. Eleven years ago, I had help, but before that.... I'd been smoking since I was about 15, really. I remember seeing that pack of Chesterfield's on my dad's bed table every day (maybe two packs - who knows?) and, although he strictly (we're talking STRICT-ly) said I'd better keep away from the things, I snagged a few from his pack one morning. Thought I'd surprise my peers at school and show them that if those guys in the movies and on TV could do it, I surely could be either: 1) a suave, debonair personality or 2) a tough guy. Hey, James Bond, accent or not, was both of the above, though I never saw him cough like my dad could. Anyway, I started that habit at such a young age, not unlike so many of us who, although we all coughed a lot, never made the absolute connection that it was that bad for us; deathly bad. Of course, Mom and Dad caught me many times when I was young, but the punishment never was quite enough to convince me to try to stop - until I grew up and matured. As if that made any difference! I did try, though (the old W.C. Fields-attributed joke was, "It's easy to stop smoking - I've done it a thousand times!"). I always came up with some easy excuse, however, to restart, like, a distant relative had a baby, or, I took my car in to have the oil changed and lit up while it was on the rack. Any excuse was sufficient. One day I took my two packs a day, told myself I was sick of them and said I was going to cut down to practically nothing for a few days and then down to non-smoker status. I did pretty well at first. Didn't have to pop one of those horrible-tasting pieces of non-smoker's gum into my mouth or put on a skin patch. I got a good supply of peppermint Life Savers and proceeded to tighten my will and get through this thing on a day-to-day basis. Now, I thought the process was going pretty well until the morning of the second day (when you're trying to stop smoking, each day is an eternity!), when I came down with a bad cold. I started shivering (figured it was probably a bad case of the shakes). I wound up with a 101 degree fever and, of course, immediately blamed that on the I've-stopped-smoking syndrome. The shock to my system triggered some immunity factor in my body and left me susceptible to all kinds of disease. I even went to a doctor who tried to tell me I had some kind of flu virus, "but it certainly has nothing to do with stopping the cigarette habit." Huh! A lot he knew! As I lie in bed nursing my symptoms it dawned on me that, if you have a cure for what ails you, you take that cure, right? I didn't have to be a Louis Pasteur or even a Dr. Phil to figure that out. So I decided to light a cigarette...a beautiful white delight... I had hidden in my night table. It was awful! I couldn't stand it! I put it out immediately after coughing incessantly for about five minutes. Bad things, those cigarettes. Keep away from 'em. No good. Ugh! Of course, if you really think about it, castor oil is bad stuff too. So are some cough medicines. But they do the job most of the time, I reasoned. I steeled myself and lit another one of those white cheroots, as Rudyard Kipling would call them. I coughed for about 30 seconds and then continued smoking until the cough went away - completely. Humph, I reasoned again. A lot those doctors know. I smoked (and coughed) very happily, I must say, until eleven years ago this week, at which time I coughed myself right into the hospital with a case of pneumonia. I almost died and I was in there for ten days - long enough to allow that most horrible of addictive substances, nicotine, to leave my body. I haven't smoked since. I discovered it was the nicotine that kept drawing me back to cigarettes. Get rid of that, and you can conquer the habit. I did it...and I did it! Last week, the city's health department launched a new anti-smoking campaign during which they've sponsored a bunch of those "scary" commercials showing what can happen if you don't stop smoking. While I was in the hospital over a decade ago, doctors said that it was lucky I caught the pneumonia; because the next step would have been emphysema and the step after that... You don't have to congratulate me. I'm alive. That's enough.
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