TUHBACKEE

It's 11pm and I'm about to go out and buy some cigarettes. We're out and I know that I'm going to want at least another one before I retire for the night. But, I mean, how pitiful is that? I'm going to go out in the cold, at an hour before midnight, in a less than safe neighborhood and pay close to $4 for something that is only contributing to my chances of not living to see retirement age!

Wanna here something else really stupid? I stopped for over 2 years about a year and a half ago! Quit! Stopped smoking! Then one day something kind of extra-upsetting happened and I felt like, "Man! I deserve a cigarette!" Questionable logic at best. Before I knew it I was at a pack a day again!

Cigarette smoking has got to be one the dumbest habits anyone could ever take up. It hurts me to say it because that's an indictment of not only myself, but some people that I really love, but it's true. It's not like it is 30, 40 years ago when people where largely clueless about the extent of smoking's harmful effects.

Now they tell us that we are not only harming ourselves but everyone around us! I gotta say though, maybe I'm just rationalizing, but my parents smoked up a storm around me when I was growing up, ditto for just about everyone that I knew in my youth. Heck! This was in a time when you could smoke just about everywhere but in surgery. (Mighta been able to do it there). Anyway, far as I can tell, neither I, nor anyone else I know suffered any ill effects from all the puffing going on around us.

Now damn near the only place that you can smoke is in a small, dark corner in the cold, damp basement of your own home. You know, it sounds so crazy to me that I wonder if maybe I didn't dream this; but I could've sworn I read an article somewhere where some town or something was trying to ban smoking, even in one's own home!

Look, if I wanna poison myself, that's my @#&^! business! And all that second-hand smoke business...

Don't get me wrong, I don't smoke around my kids. My wife and I confine are nastiness to our own small, dark, cold, damp basement. (The doctor told me we shouldn't even be doing that) But sometimes I wonder...

p.s. - See! That was kinda personal. Maybe I can get someone to respond. Oh! I keep forgetting! First I've gotta get someone to read it! C'est la friggin' vie!