The very first time I tried a cigarette was in 1973 and I was just twelve years old. I hadn�t given the idea much thought in advance; it was really just an impulse. I was home alone and there was one of my aunt�s cigarettes� and I thought to myself, �Hey� why not?�
I stepped outside our front door and walked a few steps away so the smoke wouldn�t go inside. We lived in a very rural and isolated area and I wasn�t really worried about anyone seeing me, so I didn�t try to hide; I just lit up.
I didn�t inhale � I didn�t know to inhale. I held the smoke in my mouth and let it out. No coughing, no hacking, just a nasty slimy taste in my mouth. I sucked in another mouthful of smoke and it tasted no better than the first mouthful. What, I wondered, is the big deal about this? It�s stupid. I put that cigarette out, shrugged and rolled my eyes, and went back inside.
Sometime in the next year or so, my best friend Tina decided to try smoking cigarettes. Unlike me, she lived in the city, so she had neighbor kids that were somewhat of an influence on her. I don�t know if she actually liked the experience of smoking, but she definitely thought it was cool. Her parents smoked so she could easily get her hands on stray cigarettes from time to time, sometimes even a whole pack.
The next time I spent the night at Tina�s house, she took me to the park behind her house and handed me a Marlboro. I still remember that she had a red pack of �Marlboro in the box.� I lit up as if I were an old pro at this (after all, I had tried smoking at least a year before she had). As before, I didn�t inhale. As before, I thought it was nasty.
While we were standing there trying to hold our cigarettes in a cool way like they did in the movies, Diane, a girl from Tina�s neighborhood, sauntered up and asked, �Gotta smoke?� Tina nodded and handed over her pack. I knew Diane from school but had never hung out with her; she was in a tough crowd and was known for a history of trouble and bad behavior. Even though she was in the same age and grade as Tina and me, I was a little intimidated by her. She seemed older, wiser, and way more comfortable with the use of profanity than I was at age thirteen. In a word, she was cool. Oh, how I wanted to be that. Cool.
Diane flipped open the box and immediately made a face. Her eyeballs made one complete revolution around her eye sockets before they settled back onto Tina. Holding up the box for us to see, she raised her eyebrows and uttered one profound word.
�Duh.�
Tina and I looked at the pack. From where I was standing, I could see nothing significantly wrong about it, but it was obvious there was evidence there somewhere of a mistake to be found. Tina managed to croak out a �What?� while we both looked again.
�Well first of all, ya take this out.� As she said this, Diane reached up and pulled the foil-on-one-side-paper-on-the-other removable liner from the front of the hard pack cigarette box. She crumpled it and discarded it on the ground in a practiced sweep of her arm. �Then,� she said as she pulled two stogies from the pack, �you always � always � turn one goddamn cigarette over so the tobacco end is showing.� She expertly deposited the filter end of one of the cigarettes onto her lower lip. We watched, fascinated, as it stayed there as if by magic, held there with a previously unnoticed patch of moisture, I supposed. She then shoved the other cigarette back into the pack, inverted as described.
Holding the pack out for Tina to take back, Diane instructed, �Don�t smoke that upside-down cigarette until last,� and walked away.
Tina and I were silent as we watched her leave and I would imagine that we were both feeling the same mixture of emotions: embarrassment at being caught out in our inexperience; admiration at the worldly knowledge we�d just been exposed to; and gratitude for the quick down-and-dirty lesson on coolness in one of its simplest forms.
Over the next year, I smoked cigarettes only when I was with Tina. She smoked them all the time, whether I was there or not. She�d even started skipping lunch and saving up her lunch money so she could buy her own smokes. I was amazed that she�d found a store where the cashier would sell cigarettes to a 14-year-old. I was pretty sure that a person had to be 16 before they could legally buy cigarettes, but it wasn�t like the cigarette police were going to come by and arrest that cashier for selling them a little early. Most grownups smoked, right? So no one cared if a teenager did. Well, except for maybe my parents, they�d probably care if they knew I�d been smoking, but I sure wasn�t gonna tell �em.
One day at Tina�s house, we were out in the usual place in the park behind her house and some boys came by. We all sat around on logs and stumps and smoked and talked. I felt so grown up and cool until one of the boys pointed out to everyone there that I wasn�t inhaling. This was honestly the first time I�d even heard that you were supposed to inhale. Tina and I had never talked about it and so if she was inhaling, I couldn�t believe I�d never noticed. Though I was embarrassed and most likely blushing, I pretended that I was nonchalant.
�I made a choice a long time ago not to inhale,� I said. �I like the taste of the smoke, but,� I paused to take a drag and blow it out again, �I found I don�t really care for inhaling. It�s a personal choice, y�know.�
Everyone nodded, as if it truly were a common topic discussed among teens. My next mouthful of smoke came out on a sigh of relief. They�d apparently believed me.
That day, I bummed a couple cigs from Tina and took them home with me. I�d made up my mind; I was gonna learn to inhale. I took the cigarettes with me down to the lake where there was a bench near the shore. I often went there to read or just think.
I hadn�t asked Tina or anyone else about the inhaling thing because I was embarrassed that I�d never noticed that people actually drew the smoke down into their lungs. I wasn�t even sure how it was done, but over the course of smoking the two Marlboros I had, I was determined to figure it out on my own.
Facing the lake, I put the first of the two cigarettes between my lips and lit it up, drawing the smoke only into my mouth and then letting it out. I was actually nervous. Smoking didn�t seem like such a big deal before � well no wonder! This new development was somehow mysterious and gross and exciting all at the same time. Drawing the smoke down into my lungs, well, it seemed invasive and unnatural � and grown up and sophisticated in a way that my in-the-mouth-smoking never had.
I was determined. I was gonna do this.
I drew a long pull of smoke into my mouth. Staring straight ahead, my eyes focused far out onto the lake, I did it. With a sudden sharp intake of oxygen into both my nose and throat, I carried the smoke that had been in my mouth down quickly and deeply into my lungs.
The lake tilted about twenty degrees to one side.
Whooooaaa.
The lake tilted the other way.
I let the smoke come back out on my exhale and for the first time in my young life, I felt the texture and sensation of a cloud of warm smoke making its way past my vocal cords, snaking up through my sinuses, out my nostrils, and out between my lips. It felt wonderful. It felt satisfying. It felt � wait a minute � it felt �
About five full seconds after that utterly delicious exhale, my body was wracked with the largest, hardest, most engulfing cough spasm I�d ever experienced.
Oh yeah, this was fun.
When I finally stopped coughing, ya�d think I�d crush that cigarette out and never, ever put one to my lips again. But no. Just for a moment there, just for a few seconds between the inhaling and the coughing my brains out, I�d experienced an unprecedented level of pleasure and I wanted that feeling again. So in went another mouthful of smoke, down, down, to the depths of my pulmonary organs. And another. And another after that, until I learned to pull the smoke in smoothly, inhaling like a pro.
And at just fourteen years of age, the seed for my addiction was planted.
[B]My Milage:[/B]
[B]My Quit Date: [/B]1/1/2007
[B]Smoke-Free Days:[/B] 263
[B]Cigarettes Not Smoked:[/B] 7,890
[B]Amount Saved:[/B] $789.00
[B]Life Gained:[/B]
[B]Days:[/B] 27 [B]Hrs:[/B] 3 [B]Mins:[/B] 40 [B]Seconds:[/B] 7
