Don't Smoke in Bed Part One

Ok, Canadian election is over, and we have a Conservative minority government. Of course, I am disappointed, but at the same time, whatever. I am terrified of Stephen Harper and everything he stands for. Sorry, I see him as a bigot, a religious zealot, anti woman, anti choice, latently in love with George Bush, and all in all a dangerous motherfucker. I am so disappointed in the western provinces, because this Bible belt that spans the west supports this agenda of hate. However, as it is a minority government, at least he won't be able to do fuck all and hopefully they'll topple sooner or later.
So that's all I will say about that. LOL, boy, this sure is an up post, isn't it? Anyway, I've been thinking about smoking (not actually doing it, but the act of it) lately, and then boom, I just checked Roxanne's blog, where she talked out it too, so I want to weigh in. I am not lying - last night I was thinking about smoking and thought to myself that I should blog about it, so here goes.
I grew up in a house of smokers. My parents smoked, one of my sisters smoked, and most of my parents' friends smoked. However, I absolutely hated smoke when I was a child. I was so freaky about it, I wouldn't even touch a pack of cigarettes. If someone asked me to pass them their smokes, I couldn't do it. I was so weird (like you all haven't figured that out already) that if cigarettes or matches were on the table, I'd freak out and make my parents move them before I would eat. I'd crack open windows when they'd smoke, and was just militant about it. Of course, it didn't matter - nobody quit from my urging. I remember driving from B.C. to Alberta or Saskatchewan 5 or 6 times a year, always with windows up and my parents smoking like chimneys..... it is funny how that was normal then. Anyway, my dad eventually switched to a pipe which was even worse, but that's another story. So I swore I'd never smoke or try it. You know, I probably never would have either, except I was forced into it. I remember the first time I tried smoking (I am having deja vu, so if I blogged this before, well, suck it up), it was a Sunday morning in July. I was 10 years old. My parents had all of these people over for breakfast I think, because it was the annual Chilliwack curling bon spiel, and while my parents didn't curl, all of these prairie people would come they knew, and their friends curled too, so it was this big drunk basically, if you want the God's honest truth (of course, you could never say that to them, but whatever). So, they had all of these people over and they were going to the rink all day, and so me and my next door neighbor (let's call her Ruby) were left to our own devices. Ruby was my best friend and she practically lived with us, because her parents curled all the time at odd hours so she always stayed at our house. We were inseparable, but she was bossy and I always caved. Well, this neighborhood kid, let's call her Sheena, was there too for some reason (i don't remember why) and the grown ups left for the day, and we were sitting on our deck and Ruby says how her and her cousin found a pack of Craven M smokes at the playground and they smoked them and they tasted like mint. So she says we should all try smoking and I freak out and yell and it was like the only time I ever asserted myself to her because I was a doormat for some reason, but I think she basically told me to stop being a pussy and began digging through the coffee can of cigarette butts sitting on the deck which for some reason (which I never fully understood either) my parents always dumped ashtrays into. She kept saying we all had to try it and Sheena was a big old lump and couldn't say no either (Sheena always reminded me of Blubber from the Judy Blume book). So anyway, Ruby tells us how to smoke these butts and so I remember clearly praying silently and saying "I am sorry Jesus" and tried it... and then I started gagging, and since I had this horrible fear of vomiting (it was a neurosis with me, I'll post on that freakiness some other time, but I think it is the root of my panic disorder later in life), I knew it was my punishment for doing this. It was horrible and we kept trying, and I just hated it. So, Ruby says we need Menthol smokes because they taste like a mint, and so we pool our money (95 cents was all we needed) and went to the store and she bought a pack of Cameo, because they had a green package. So we went down to the slough, and again I was almost in tears about it, but she kept telling us to suck on them unlit, and yes, they tasted like mint. And then we started smoking them, and suddenly I got the hang of it and voila, I had this wave come over me like "this is what my hands were meant to do." I was 10 years old. Me, who never would touch a cigarette before that day was sucking them back and lighting them one off the other. We went through that pack and then walked like 3 miles to the 7-11 but they wouldn't sell us more without a note, so we somehow went somewhere else and got another pack. We smoked that one that day and the next, and then Ruby said she should quit and I said yes, because God forbid I didn't do what she said, and we did quit. My parents smoked these god-awful cigarettes, Matinee Special Filter, which even when I was a drunk teenager dying for a smoke would make me literally gag, so there was no temptation there to smoke. However, every once in a while, I would just go buy a pack and smoke them at the slough, usually with my friend Darren and my friend Steven. Sometimes Ruby and I would smoke together too. We didn't inhale at this point, so that was ok I suppose. However, the next year, we again started smoking, as my sort of girlfriend Delilah smoked and all the bad kids smoked, and we started inhaling we really only smoked for a month or two probably - luckily for me, this is when I ended up moving, so I got to quit smoking again. Sadly, none of my friends did, and they kept smoking - from 12 years old on....
So the next summer, Ruby came to visit for like a month. Of course, she was a smoker by then, and we would go smoke all the time. The freaky thing is that she smoked in the bathroom one day and my mom came to me and asked if I was smoking in the can and I didn't have to hide my habits from her. Now, I admit, I think she was probably drunk, but the fact she said this to me, at 13 years old, blows me away.... So anyway, I didn't really smoke again except when I went to visit Chilliwack, as all my friends smoked. I loved it, but I had some self-preservation in me. It was never about cool, as I always hid it, but it just felt right, right from that day we first tried it.
I didn't start smoking regularly until I was going into grade 10. I wasn't a heavy smoker, but I felt it was acceptable then to smoke at that age without looking like some juvie, so I jumped back in. I loved smoking. In high school, my favorite brand was du Maurier light king size, but I also loved menthol cigarettes, and I can, to this day, remember what all different brands tasted like. I actually would buy 100s when I could, even though they were so gay looking, just so that I could get extra smoking time off of them. Margo rolled her own, and they were so tight they were like 3 hour logs, which was great when you were drinking.... anyway, I loved smoking..... but then it became an addiction.
Part two will be tomorrow, gotta go to bed....