Jump to full article: Southern Pines (NC) Pilot, 2009-06-10
Author: STEVE BOUSER
Intro: "Smoking or non?"
Confronted with that question when in search of a quick restaurant meal, my wife and I let haste overcome good judgment and opted for "either." We ended up trapped in a room that felt so much like a nicotine gas chamber that we asked for carry-out boxes and fled. We could still smell it on our clothes hours later.
"I can't believe how bad it was in there," Brenda said.
"What I can't believe," I replied, "is that both of our houses must have been even worse when we were growing up, and we didn't even notice it."
North Carolina's recent decision to ban smoking from restaurants and bars is a landmark event . . .
There's a myth that we didn't know cigarettes were bad for us till the surgeon general enlightened us. But not so. Why do you think we called them "coffin nails"?
Even though I smoked for years, I never really knew why I and my friends were doing it, except that it made you look more grown up. But why were the grownups doing it? It's not as if tobacco smoke gave you some kind of pleasant narcotic rush. It was mostly a matter of continuing to do it because you got the jitters if you stopped. Weird.
When I finally did quit smoking cigarettes for good (in college, after the Army), it wasn't through any noble act of will. I just got tired of the things and woke up one morning to realize that they didn't make sense any more.
As if they ever had.
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