Envy us.
The smell of cigarette smoke reminds me of the long retired, Canadian two-dollar bill. Queen Elizabeth II was middle-aged on them. They were copper brown. They smelled of caramel. It was replaced with a foolish coin. There's a loon on it. The toonie. Original.
It's a rarity, the appreciation of cigarette smoke. Once prescribed to pregnant women by doctors it is now on the endangered list of cool. It is the portly red-headed child of social functions. It is the inappropriate drunk uncle at a bbq.
Barely tolerated.
The statistics have spoken. The science is clear. Apparently, tobacco is not a replacement for oxygen.
My mother smoked while she was pregnant with me. I have a picture of her somewhere in thick blue eye-shadow, bell-bottomed. A 20-year-old (married at 19) with a do-rag (for you oldsters) on her head and an ash about an inch long. Her young smile and the white smoke curling upwards between her fingers would have looked cooler without her distended tape-worm midriff.
My mother smoked while she was pregnant with me. I have a picture of her somewhere in thick blue eye-shadow, bell-bottomed. A 20-year-old (married at 19) with a do-rag (for you oldsters) on her head and an ash about an inch long. Her young smile and the white smoke curling upwards between her fingers would have looked cooler without her distended tape-worm midriff.
Cigarette smoke takes me back to the 80's. Clorets gum, cheap leather purses and the backseat of a blue Ford LTD my mother bought. The delicious earthy smell of the first puff of a cigarette as it whirled around the car with the windows open. Heaven.
It had a cassette player.
John Denver.
Both long dead.
It had a cigarette lighter.
Another dinosaur.
One day, believing it impossible for something to be hot without glowing red, I crossed the rubicon of childhood disbelief into a lesson of pure physics. The lighter popped out. Faded quickly back to grey. A circular kiss of hot metal tattooed my little pink thumb. I can still smell it, the coil of ashy skin making concentric circles against my fingerprint.
I later dared my little brother to test this glow-red-heat theory on the stove-element of our drab two-bedroom highrise. His full hand. My mother actually put margarine on it afterwards.
Margarine. Then frozen peas. He never ratted me out, the foolish boy, but I still wonder what two halflings were doing unattended around a hot stove. Of course, my little brother was recently released from the bosom of the federal penitentiary system at the tender age of 36. He smokes too.
The Ford LTD. It was our first family car since my father left. Cool-to-the-touch metal seatbelts (that were occasionally employed in 1982), shiny, with the Chevy imprint on the release button. It meant I didn't have to make the post dinner walk to the corner store with a permission note with that crumpled, brown bill. She bought her own smokes now. I remember plastic milk bags in my Cougar boots in the winter. Ottawa winters. The sun sets before 5. Decisions on what to do with the remaining change were my biggest life decisions. Dr. Pepper. Dill pickle chips. I would sometimes open the tight red package and inhale deeply to smell the tightly rolled sweetness of twenty-odd tobacco soldiers.
The mob has spoken on cigarettes in the west. They're not having it. Shame.
Get on a plane anywhere, and I mean anywhere, and you'll discover that cigarettes endure as a social mainstay. Latin America, Africa, China. Every man, woman and child over the age of 12 is smoking cigarettes. Indoors, outdoors, everywhere. I've been. It makes me smile. Along with coal burning plants, they simply do not care what you think about cigarettes. We are nations of frou-frou softies.
In my town, I still admire the people who like to smoke. In light of all the literature, the taboo, the furrowed brows, bylaws, fines, the ones who smoke are truly free.
Just don't do it while pregnant. My mother said it didn't stunt my growth, but I can't drink a pint without racing to the loo every ten. Bladder the size of a quarter.
In the movies there's a reason why on your deathbed you ask for a cigarette.
Never the bible or whiskey. No divulgence of sin, or to right a lifetime of misdemeanours, or worse. Tobacco, everytime. Your friend must light it for you. It's only civilized after all.
Apocalypse? It's dart-time. You take your last draw on that ciggie with an unrivalled fervour and satisfaction.
Maybe the bad guys have taken you out of the plot. Your number is up. With happy closed eyes, bleeding out onto the hot sand, (or inner-city parking lot) your last smoke is exhaled with the satisfaction akin to the relief of a thanksgiving fart.
It is the last middle-finger of freedom.
They use two-fingers in Britain. There's another name for cigarette there.
The mob has spoken on cigarettes in the west. They're not having it. Shame.
Get on a plane anywhere, and I mean anywhere, and you'll discover that cigarettes endure as a social mainstay. Latin America, Africa, China. Every man, woman and child over the age of 12 is smoking cigarettes. Indoors, outdoors, everywhere. I've been. It makes me smile. Along with coal burning plants, they simply do not care what you think about cigarettes. We are nations of frou-frou softies.
In my town, I still admire the people who like to smoke. In light of all the literature, the taboo, the furrowed brows, bylaws, fines, the ones who smoke are truly free.
Just don't do it while pregnant. My mother said it didn't stunt my growth, but I can't drink a pint without racing to the loo every ten. Bladder the size of a quarter.
In the movies there's a reason why on your deathbed you ask for a cigarette.
Never the bible or whiskey. No divulgence of sin, or to right a lifetime of misdemeanours, or worse. Tobacco, everytime. Your friend must light it for you. It's only civilized after all.
Apocalypse? It's dart-time. You take your last draw on that ciggie with an unrivalled fervour and satisfaction.
Maybe the bad guys have taken you out of the plot. Your number is up. With happy closed eyes, bleeding out onto the hot sand, (or inner-city parking lot) your last smoke is exhaled with the satisfaction akin to the relief of a thanksgiving fart.
It is the last middle-finger of freedom.
They use two-fingers in Britain. There's another name for cigarette there.
