Smoking

This coming August I will be smoke free for 20 years. That's a long time, nearly as long as I smoked. When I decided to do something about it I was smoking 3 packs a day and I quit more or less cold turkey. I slowly weaned myself from them. If I could only use the same approach to my waistline. :)

The reason I mention this is that I began smoking at roughly 13, so a lot of my memories from high school include smoking. I will see a comment by someone and I can't remember it. Why? Because most likely I was outside smoking when that happened.

My daily routine revolved around the smoking areas outback. My day started there most days and I visited the area several times throughout the day. In between classes, at lunch, whenever.

But I wasn't the only one out there. There were dozens, including girls. The girls didn't show up nearly as often as the guys, but they were there.

The most common area I guess was on the balcony above the cafeteria. It was jam packed a lot of the time. Then there was the area around the doors halfway up the backside of the building, and then a few times under the overhang below the main hallway... and as I've mentioned before, a few times in the boys room. We could not smoke in front of the building.

All of that seems so funny and so foreign now that so many places are smoke free. I don't even have any friends that smoke these days. Not that I know of anyway. Even at church it's different. Back then a group of us, men and boys, smoked outside the church door before service started... trying to get that last hit. Now, I can't honestly name one person at my church that smokes. I'm sure there must be someone, but they've never done it around me.

At work, one person in my group smokes, but the company restricts smoking to certain areas, and it's hard sometimes for her to get in a smoke break during the day. A far cry from the days the ashtray on my desk was piled high with butts.

Oh well, I guess this is one area that's changed for the better. Smoking gags me now.