"NoOne N Particular" wrote

One evening as I was going home from work (and I had worked a couple of
hours overtime), I stopped in at a local 7/11 and bought a new pack of
cigarettes. Sitting in the house watching the news there was a couple
of stories about famous people dieing from lung cancer but I didn't
think much about it. Until I was going to work the next morning. I
took out my pack of cigarettes and there was only two left in the pack
that I had just purchased the night before.

That got me thinking (and the pain was tremendous :-) ). Anyway, my
wife didn't like me smoking and I had two small kids in the house (ages
4 and 7). I also started running some numbers about how much smoking
cost me and the things I could do with that money. But the thing that
got me most was that if I didn't do something I would be one of those
people with lung cancer. I threw the two remaining cigarettes away and
have not had another smoke since. That was 26 years ago today.

Similar story:

November 16, 1991, freezing rain, I'm sick as a dog with a cough/fever, and
onstage playing a local, packed concert under _hot_ lights. During the break
before the last set and, being out, went to the cigarette machine in the
venue. Naturally, they did NOT have my brand (I was down to smoking Merit
Ultralights (3 packs a day) thinking it's gotta be the lesser of multiple
evils).

Naw .. nothing else would do, I gotta have those damn Merits. No problem,
advised there was a convenience store "about three blocks away", I take off
on foot, with no coat and still sweating from those stage lights ... three
block turns into 8 there, and 8 back, in the freezing rain. By this time, if
I wasn't sick before, I damn sure hadn't wasted the opportunity to be that
way!

Finished the gig, packed up, sicker and sicker by the minute, and madder and
madder at myself for just how stupidly I let those cigarettes wag my tail,
threw what was left of the pack (about half) out the window ... and haven't
had one since.

.... and thank gawd it was raining, or about an hour later I would have gone
back and found that half empty pack!

Smoking was one of the most pleasurable things I've ever done in life, if
for nothing else the opportunity to "take a break" during a hectic day, stop
the express train and have a smoke. Hell, I actually stopped a war to take a
smoke break on more than one occasion.

I don't miss the cigarettes so much after all these years. But what I do
miss is that down time, "pause that refreshes", multiple times a day.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/25/07
KarlC@ (the obvious)