Just Trying to Be Cool

Mike Thomas

I see them at the mall1 all the time, boys and girls hanging out, puffingcigarettes. I want to grab them by their grungy4 necks and snake some sense into them, tell them to turn back before it's too late. But they would look at me the way I would have looked at an adult when I started to smoke 30 years ago.

I was about nine years old when my buddy5 Greg and I first lit up. We combined our allowances, walked to the gas station and <a href="http://www.rep1ica.com/GoodsBrand/Replica-Hublot-Watches-44.html">Hublot Replica</a> slipped 35 cents into the cigarette machine. We pulled the lever for Kool cigarettes.

Greg thought the Beatles smoked Kools. Now we would, too. We went to a field, hid in the shrubs and fired up. We did not know about inhaling, and we failed at smoke rings. But the strong menthol smoke still burned, and that was okay. I looked like one of the tough guys in the movies. They all smoked.

Bob from across the street smoked Camel cigarettes. They didn't have filters14, and sometimes he'd spit out little pieces of tobacco. He looked really cool. He was 18.

One day I told Bob I also smoked, and he snickered15. Bob said that I probably did not inhale.

Inhale?

Bob let me take a puff of his cigarette. My virginal pink lungs recoiled at the onslaught of soot, carbon monoxide and tar. 1 spit the smoke out in violent spasms. Bob laughed. I was determined to learn to inhale without coughing. I worked at it, forcing my body to accept the poison.

In seventh grade I made a new buddy who smoked like an adult. When he got near the end of his cigarette, he pinched22 the butt23 between thumb and forefinger, took a final drag and then flicked it away.

I wanted to smoke like that. I practiced lighting up as if I weren't paying attention, then let the ash accumulate25 like I was a regular smoker.

In high school I stopped smoking when I joined the track team. I started up again when I quit running in my junior year. I would hang around the parking lot after school, and when my girl came out, I'd light her a cigarette with mine.

I don't know at what point I became addicted26. But smoking slowly evolved from something I did because it was cool to something I did because my body craved27 the nicotine28.

I barely had enough money to make it through college, but cigarettes held top priority on the spending list. After college I started running again, but unlike in high school I kept smoking. After a race, I'd sit in my car and have a cigarette. Other runners would walk by and look at me with contempt.

My entire life was geared around getting my next fix of nicotine, in the end, that disgusted me even more than the hacking, the stink31 of smoke on my clothes, the globs32 of phlegm331 coughed up every morning. It is what made me finally quit.

I put a single cigarette in my coffee table and swore I would not smoke it, that cigarette called to me like the sirens34 called to sailors. I thought about it first in the morning and all day at work. I <a href="http://www.bestwatches4u.com/cartier-c-167.html">Tag Heuer Replica Watches</a> dreaded going home to face another night of unrelenting5 craving.

People who have never smoked, or who have never been hooked36 on alcohol or drugs, cannot comprehend the agony37 of withdrawal.

It's been ten years now. I hope I have quitted for good38. But I still get cravings. I saddled myself with this for the rest of my life without knowing what I was doing. I was just a kid trying to be cool, wanting to be an adult.

A thousand people who took up smoking as kids are going to die from it today. They will be replaced by 3000 kids who are going to take their first puff today.

Just like the kids at the mall.