Smoking

Tsk tsk. Kids smoking at age twelve. How sad.

I don't know how I came to feel so passionately about smoking. You'd think something traumatic had happened to me when I was a child... like those stories you hear of parents burning their kids with cigarettes or ashing in their kids' hair or something crazy. But nope, my parents didn't smoke. I don't remember any of my friends' parents smoking either. My grandparents did, but rarely in front of us. Maybe that was the key. Since I was never around smoking and because my family treated smoking like something bad that needed to be hidden... I learned it was something that I was supposed to hate.

And I'm glad I learned that early. To this day, I've only tried a cigarette once... and I was drunk and only took like two hits, so it didn't really count, right? I went through a phase in college where I enjoyed smoking cigars... but cigars, to me, weren't as gross as cigarettes because they smell good and you don't inhale the smoke. But I'm over that... and now I'm happily and healthily smoke-free.

Unfortunately, my underexposure to cigarettes has led to some slightly embarrassing situations. One of these times was in high school. I was a senior and was tutoring a freshman in French. He was flicking and flipping his pen as I taught him. I thought it looked cool so I asked him how to do it. Nonchalantly, he responded, "Just pretend like you're ashing a cigarette." I gripped my pen between my fingers and went along with it like I knew what the hell I was doing... and... proceeded to violently fling my pen all the way across the classroom. Ughhh I felt like such a square. But he probably wasn't surprised. Seniors who stay after school to tutor probably do not participate in any type of smoking.

Another time was a few months ago when one of my coworkers brought a pack of candy gum cigarettes to work. When he handed me one, I noticed one end was shaded brown... and I couldn't remember for the life of me which end you put in your mouth. I tried to remember all the pictures and movies I've seen of people smoking... tried to think of all the people who used to smoke at the bar (when you could still smoke at bars)... and drew a complete blank. Nervously, I shoved it my mouth and quickly chewed the whole stick. Problem solved.

The most recent time was five minutes and two paragraphs ago when I asked my friend who used to smoke in high school if it's correct to say I took two "puffs" of a cigarette. He told me to use "drags" or "hits" instead. I've never heard anyone say "drag" in my life except maybe on TV and I've always considered "hit" to be a term more related to recreational drugs. But apparently people who know what they're talking about definitely do not say "puff". Who knew? So, I went with "hit". At least I've heard people use that word.