Since I was bored and had a lot of idle time on my hands, smoking seemed like a good way to pass the time away.
Finally, when my father found out I was smoking, he didn't try very hard to make me stop. I was at an age where I was still impressionable and could have been talked out of smoking. I came walking into the house smoking a cigarette one day. I was almost eighteen years old and felt I was too old to be sneaking around or trying to hide the fact that I was smoking. My father saw the cigarette in my hand and told me they were hard to quit. I said, "Yeah, yeah, I know." But, I couldn't even fathom how hard it would be. He should have laid a Louisville Slugger upside my head and told me not to smoke. I may have listened. I"m sure that he felt that he would have sounded like a hypocrite if he had made a big deal out of it. But, I wish he had.
Those were the reasons I started smoking. My body was subjected to second hand smoke on a daily basis. I had an incredibly boring job and needed to pass the time away. And my father, not wanting to be hypocritical, did not try very hard to make me stop. But, starting to smoke did not make it the worse decision of my life. It was the effects of smoking that made the decision so disastrous.
One of the adverse effects of smoking is the unpleasant aroma of cigarette smoke. This was never more evident than in the very first class of the year. We were paired up with classmates and instructed to ask questions to get to know one another. The first question I was asked was what brand of cigarettes I smoked. I was taken aback. It dawned on me that the reason my classmate knew I smoked was because of the smell of my clothes. Every smoker bears its unmistakable aroma.
Another effect of smoking is that your money goes up in smoke. The cost of cigarettes continues to spiral upwards with no end in sight. I estimate that over the past 29 years I have spent over $50,000.
