Smoker

The heavily ashed cigarette hung out of his mouth at a relaxed angle. He held onto it loosely, tucking it into the corner of his mouth as only a true smoker would. Anyone with less experience would purse their lips just a little too tightly, fearing the small burned hole in their perfectly worn jeans if the cigarette were to fall. I’ve never met this neighbor, but as I drove past his half-mowed lawn dressed in my black pants and wrinkled white blouse, I resisted the urge to pull my car right up to the end of his driveway. For a moment I saw myself carefully placing my car in park, opening up my car door to introduce myself as the neighbor down the street. Upon which, he would turn off his lawn mower, offer me a seat on one of his black rockers on the porch and we’d sit and smoke a cigarette together, commenting on the rain this week. “Great for the lawn, if it could just stay green and mow itself, everyone would be happy.” I would take a long inhale off of the cigarette and nod my head in perfect agreement.

A few weeks ago, as my family and I sat around my sister’s dining room table I made a decision. “I smoked in college.” There, it was out. Now, I waited and scanned my mom and dad’s faces. My sister, already privy to this information, stopped scraping food off the dishes in the kitchen and gave me the raised eyebrow expression. My Dad had just finished telling us the story about his “business associates”, that is what he always calls them, not people from work, or the fellows he works with, they are business associates, period. This particular group of business associates happened to want to end a night at a cigar bar. Dad, who quit smoking years ago, had to decline. “I really wanted to go in there and have a cigar. I really wanted to. I knew I had to go home. There was no way I could go in and say no to all those cigars.”

I’ve actually had more than a few nightmares that I catch my Dad sneaking a smoke somewhere. I find out he never really did quit and I am horrified. My Dad just looked at me from across the table and smiled, “Are you kidding?”

“Nope.”

“Wait,” my mom jumped in. “Did you inhale?” Who knew Bill Clinton and I would encounter the same questions someday.

Offended, I answered, “Of course I did!” What kind of baby smoker did they take me for anyway?

My Dad looked at me in total disbelief. Perhaps he was thinking of the famous letter I wrote to him when I was about eight. Growing up, my Dad smoked two or three packs a day. Each morning he would shuffle downstairs wearing his once navy robe over his pajamas, grab a lighter and his pack of cigarettes and head to the garage for the first cigarette of the day.

In the letter, I begged him with my elementary handwriting, to quit smoking. I even included my own little cartoonish fuzz ball creature. The bubble over his round little body said, “I know you can do it. Just think of how proud of yourself you will be once you quit!” With my mom’s encouragement, we folded the letter up and sent it to his office at work. My mom knowingly felt that such a plea would resonate with more vigor if it were to be received unexpectedly.
So he quit. He transformed into a bear for a few weeks, snapping and growling at anything that moved. He quit cold turkey. My hacking cough the pediatrician blamed on the second hand smoke stopped, and my sister and I no longer covered our noses on the way home from church when my Dad would gratefully light up, but not allow more than one window to be cracked open.

I hated it when my Dad smoked. I loved it when I smoked. I still miss it. I miss sitting somewhere with someone and just counting the inhales, how many you have left before you snub it out. I smoked because I couldn’t really drink. Drinking just made me silly for about 30 minutes. Each time I attempted to drink with any purpose, I ended up vomiting. The entire day afterwards was always ruined. Plus, it was pleasurably rebellious for me to smoke. People’s faces lit up with genuine shock when they saw me light up, “You smoke?” they would shriek.

“Yep,” I would answer taking an extra long drag to prove it.

Smoking was my way of saying, “You know what, you don’t know everything about me. I am not as predictable as you think. Don’t label me Miss Goodie Two Shoes. There are lots of surprising things about me. Hang around and you’ll see.” The fear of course was, maybe I am not so surprising. In reality, I am pretty predictable; it’s been my nature for as long as I can remember. I go to bed early, floss my teeth every morning, try to eat a healthy as I can, take my vitamins every day, pray and try to stay on a budget.

So, as I drove past my neighbor, who I don’ t know, on my street and watched him smoke that cigarette while he trudged up and down his lawn, painting those neat stripes across it, I pushed aside the desire to jump out of my reliable Honda Civic to chat and bum a smoke. Instead, I pulled into our driveway, grabbed a pen. Writing down my miles for the week’s expense account, I gathered up my work bag, the file folders stuffed inside, proof of my work for the day, and headed inside.