Why I Don't Smoke

Today is the Great American Smoke Out. So, given that and the title of this post, you might think I was getting ready to lecture all of you on not smoking and hold myself out as a perfect example of a non-smoker. Sorry to disappoint, but I am not going to do either one of those things. I am going to tell you why I personally don't smoke.

My decision not to be a smoker has nothing to do with saving my lungs from looking like week-old road kill. It really has nothing to do with wanting my teeth to be white rather than yellow. It has little to do with the price of cigarettes. My decision did not stem from a fear of cancer or other hideous diseases. It's not because I think smokers have bad breath or look gross. It is not because I don't like smelling like an ashtray. In fact, there was a period of time when I thought smokers were the absolutely litmus test of coolness.

I wanted to be a smoker in college. All of my friends were smokers and, I admit, I thought it looked cool. Smokers always had an "in" with a stranger. "Do you have a light?" "Can I bum a cigarette?" I saw my friends pick up more men with those two lines than they could have by taking off their shirts in a crowded bar.

Considering all of that, here is the reason I do not smoke. I watched my dad quit smoking after being a heavy smoker for 20 years.

My dad became a smoker when he went to college in 1958. He was a very heavy smoker (even smoked a pipe for many years). Of course, these were the days when everyone smoked. He smoked when my mother was pregnant with both me and my brother and smoked when we were growing up. For some reason, he decided to quit smoking in 1978. I don't remember the reason. I don't remember whether there were all of the PSAs on the air about the effects of smoking. But I do remember the day he quit.

It was early Spring and we had been out to eat at a diner-type restaurant. I was 7 years old. My dad said at dinner that he was going to quit smoking today, right now, cold turkey. (I had no idea what cold turkey meant.) He left his pack on the table, along with his matches. We bundled up and left the restaurant. As we were getting in the car, the waitress came running after us saying, "Sir, sir! You forgot your cigarettes!!" My dad said, "Keep them. I'm done."

What followed that moment of incredible strength was the worst four weeks of my family's life. My dad had terrible withdrawals. He shook all of the time. He was coughing up gross stuff. He had constant headaches and would lay on the couch with a pillow over his face. He didn't play with me or my brother anymore. And he was incredibly grouchy and mean.

This is the only time in my parents 40 year marriage that I remember them fighting in a semi-violent manner. No physical fighting, just yelling and slamming doors. (They fought other times, but mostly heated discussion fighting.) This is also the only time I ever heard them discussing divorce. At the worst point, they were fighting and my dad screamed, "Do you want me to leave, is that it? Fine! I'll leave!" And he walked out the door.

To my seven year old brain, I thought he was gone forever. I cried and cried and my mother tried to explain to me that he was sick. To me, sick was coughing or throwing up. She explained that he was sick because of the cigarettes and soon he would be better. He came back a few hours later and things were fine. But the incident scared me enough to scare me away from smoking for life.

In the end, I don't know how well PSAs work against combatting smoking. I think it really does take a personal reason for people to make the decision not to smoke, especially for teenagers and young adults. I don't smoke because I do not want to go through what my dad went through physically, my parents went through in their relationship, or what they put their children through. And, pretty much, that is the only reason I don't smoke.