Well, I'm not wasting any time getting into one of my rants on this blog, am I? (Don't worry ... there's lighter stuff coming up quite soon enough.) And boy, are we getting into a big rant right off the bat, one of my biggest pet peeves of all: smokers. My dislike for smokers goes beyond the simple fact that I can't breathe the crap they exhale (think about it ... that's the shit that even their lungs couldn't process!) or that they otherwise smell thoroughly disgusting (really, if they knew how horrible they stank, especially right after they've smoked a cigarette, I bet 80% of them would be shocked into quitting cold-turkey). I actually lose a bit of respect for people I know if I find out that they're smokers, specifically with regard to my estimate of their intelligence.
How smart can you really be if you're a smoker? Think about it: you're paying a corporation (full of bald-faced liars) a ridiculous amount of money in exchange for the "privilege" of them slowly poisoning you to death, and worst of all you're doing it completely willingly. Am I the only one mystified by this behavior? Can you blame me for thinking smokers are stupid? "It relaxes me," some people say. Really? It wouldn't relax me to know I'm pumping concentrated amounts of known carcinogens into my lungs, instead of the oxygen that my body needs. The worst part is that a lot of people who smoke are the people who can least afford to, especially those poor schmucks at or below the poverty line, who live paycheck to paycheck, yet can still scrape together enough cash to regularly buy a pack of cigarettes ... and then have the nerve to complain about how they "can't seem to make ends meet"! Oh, how I'd love to punch them in the face.
We all know that nicotine is addictive (which is where the "bald-faced liars" reference above comes from ... the tobacco executives had the nerve to say before a grand jury that it's not), so I'm not without sympathy toward smokers, at least to an extent. My father was a smoker for the first 25 years of my life, but it took an extended hospital stay due to an aggressive form of cancer for him to quit. My sad old great-uncle, in the last couple years of his life, barely had the strength to hobble between his bed and the living-room couch in the morning and the evening (with the occasional trip to the bathroom), but would nevertheless continue to smoke until his dying day. And then there's the ex-husband of a friend of mine, who still uses smokeless chewing tobacco despite the fact that HALF OF HIS LOWER JAW WAS REMOVED because of its ill effects. And yes, I'm including those "chew" users in the category of "smokers" ... every bit as dumb.
Now just so you know, I'm definitely not a "smoking Nazi" ... I won't arbitrarily flash a smoker a gratuitous look of disgust, or verbally chastise them or goad them to quit at every opportunity. I honestly believe that smokers have a right to smoke in certain places if they insist on doing so, and I think the efforts of these anti-smoking activists to ban smoking in outdoor areas is going a bit too far -- and even in bars, really ... I mean, going into a bar and not expecting to be exposed to cigarette smoke is kind-of like going to San Francisco and not expecting to see any gay people. But I also think that those of us who don't want to be exposed to tobacco smoke have a right (within reason) to have it kept away from us. I'm a big believer in what I call "lowest common denominator" reasoning, in this case: smokers can comfortably breathe either tobacco smoke or oxygen, but non-smokers can comfortably breathe only oxygen -- so the rights of non-smokers should take precedence. Can anyone honestly fight the logic in that? I think not.
Smoking is addictive, yes, but all it takes to stop is enough determination. One of my closest friends, who smoked for a good 20 years or so, mustered up his will power about ten years ago, went on the patch for a couple of weeks, and hasn't lit up since. And yes, I might have gently persuaded him to quit, but I'm not one of those relentlessly pestering kind of people, so it was mostly his own motivation to, among other things, save a startlingly large amount of money by not "needing" to buy cigarettes anymore (not to mention improve his health ... he told me shortly afterward that he hadn't felt that good in years). And he probably won't know until he reads this, but his quitting smoking is quite possibly the thing I most respect him for above all else.
So, all you smokers out there, the next time The Great American Smokeout comes along, please give it an honest try. Maybe you'll suffer from nicotine withdrawals for a very short time, but in the long run, you'll save a lot of money, you'll smell better, you'll feel better ... and you'll win back some of my respect. It's a win-win situation, isn't it?
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