Cigarette Smoking, A Lesson Learned Early………When I was around ten or eleven years old, my friends, little brother and I thought it would be cool to smoke.  If you remember smoking was the norm back then.  How many people remember seeing cartons of cigarettes with a bow on them, as a Christmas present under your tree!  Anyway, we used to go down to the neighborhood school and hang out.  The school was a cool place to sit and talk.  It had woods, a stream and of course a big rock, large enough for all to sit on.

Although we never bought cigarettes, we would look on the ground to find the leftover butts to smoke.  It was a much safer time growing up in the early to mid-sixties.  I never inhaled, but just puffed on them.  I couldn’t tell the difference on who was an inhaler and who was just a puffer.

So one day we were at the dinner table enjoying our dinner.  At the time there were five kids in my family.  The sixth came many years later.  In the dining room my Mother, Father and older sister had their dinner and in the little kitchen was my two little brothers and a sister in a high chair and me.

After dinner was over, my Father called my brother and me in the dining room.  I could tell by the tone in his voice something was wrong.  He asked us if we were smoking.  Of course we denied it.  But, I believe my Mother had tipped him off.  He took out two cigarettes and gave one each to my brother and me.  He told us to start smoking.  I would puff on it and couldn’t tell what my brother was doing.  He told us to start inhaling.  I was crying and I guess my brother was faking it.  He made us inhale the entire cigarette.  My head was spinning.  That was the first time I must have been tripping.  I was nauseous and couldn’t take it anymore.

When we finished our cigarette, as luck would have it, that night, there was a rare dessert, ice cream.  I was in no mood for ice cream and went down to our basement praying the dizziness would stop.

My brother never made it to the basement and enjoyed his dessert.  I guess he was the inhaler all along and continued to smoke during life.  That cigarette episode taught me a great lesson and I have never had the urge to smoke again.  By today’s standards I guess that punishment seemed harsh, but it worked… for me anyway.

Cigarette Smoking