(I’m not going to talk about Bowie tonight. I need time to process the news.)

I had my music collection on random, and this gem from a lost era popped up^[1] :

Yup, that relic of the 90’s is 20 years now. And hearing it made me think back not just to the era where they first started banning indoor smoking in public places and the phrase “politically correct” was tossed around by everyone (but mostly conservatives), but to my entire life experience with smoking.

When I was a little kid in the Seventies, everybody smoked. My parents, my neighbors, my teachers, my aunts and uncles, my babysitter… virtually every adult I know smoked.

It was ubiquitous. There were ashtrays everywhere in public in a vain attempt to keep smokers from flicking ash and grinding out butts wherever they happened to be, as if they were wild horses taking a shit. “What brand do you smoke? ” was a safe conversation starter. The people on TV smoked and so did the people in the movies. Smoking was as much of a given as having a cell phone is now. ^[2]

And I hated it, because it meant that poor little me ended up sandwiched between my two parents, them both smoking like chimneys in cold weather, and me trying to get clean air by slouching down in my seat until I was below the danger zone.

Thank goodness hot air rises.

Then as I got older, peer pressure came into play. I had eventually made friends with some of the heavy metal kids in 6th grade via being a fan of KISS due to my sister being (way)into them, I made sort-of friends with two guys named Kevin and Trevor, and through them got to know some other metal-head types, and that led to the classic peer pressure scene from every after-school special happening to me.

I remember it like it was the day before yesterday. I was hanging out with these bad seed types outside the YMCA that was across the street from my school. They were all smoking, and the point came where they offered a cigarette to me, and told me I would like it, and didn’t I want to be cool?

And I really considered it. I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be cool, I wanted to be cool, I wanted the acceptance of this new group of friends that had introduced me to the glories of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Metallica. And I loved how they dressed. I wanted to be like them.

But I just couldn’t do it. Instead, I left and went home.

This was a great embarrassment to Trevor and Kevin, who had vouched for me. If I had stayed around, I honestly probably could have talked my way out of the awkwardness. But the whole situation suddenly disgusting me and I just wanted to go home.

Later on, in junior high, when I was sort-of friends with Jason Heisler and Michael Foucault, I kinda sounded them out on the subject, and Jason agreed that smoking was stupid. Michael smoked, but he respected our opinions on the matter.

So it never really became an issue again in my life except for the usual smoke-dodging at home. But that wasn’t a big deal, because my parents didn’t smoke at the table, so even when my sister Anne and brother David started smoking (making the population of the home 2/3 smoker), the number of situations where I was forced to endure smoke dropped drastically.

In fact, all through high school, my only brush was that was outside the “smoking door” (the only place where students were allowed to smoke), which is where all the heavy metal kids hung out.

But I hated it out there. It was so gross. So once more, cigarettes came between me and being a part of the heavy metal community.

No wonder I hate them. (The cigarettes, not the heavy metal community. They rock!)

Then I went off to university, and made the best friends I had ever had. All of us nerdy as hell, we got together in the student cafeteria known as The Pit, so we called ourselves the Pit Crew.

And only one of us smoked, and even he eventually stopped due to the passive peer pressure of being the only smoker amongst, frankly, people too nerdy to smoke. Like me.

And that was the end of it, until my mom got bronchitis.

Up until that point, I didn’t hate tobacco. I thought it was disgusting and I was glad I wasn’t saddled with the addiction, and I wished my relatives did not smoke, but I didn’t hate it.

But one night, I was lying on my bed reading, and I heard my mother start to cough. And cough. On and on, And the longer it went, the more worried and anxious I was, and the angrier I got as a result. And by the time she finally stopped, I knew I fucking hated the tobacco industry in all its manifestations, and that’s still how I feel to this day. I will feel that way till the day I die.

Because tobacco attacked my mother. There’s no coming back from that.

So by the time that song came out, I was all for this new policy of keeping smoking away from us non-smokers as much as possible. Smoke all you want, but keep your filthy fucking smoke away from my lungs, damn it.

And what really amazes me is that the entire culture changed as a result. Now nobody smokes indoors any more. Not even in their own homes. And the number of smokers in North America is dwindling rapidly.

So my hope is that, at least in this culture, smoking just kind of dies off on its own.

Wouldn’t that be something?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.