Thank You for Smoking

Last night while Hay and I watched RV Georgia decided that I should get off my laptop and give her love instead of doing whatever very important work I was doing at the time (commenting on other blogs, I believe). When she sat down on the laptop the screen suddenly switched over to Microsoft Word and the screen began producing lines and lines and lines of G's. I showed Hay, because it's humorous that Georgie with a G was able to locate the G key with her (rib cage? paw? belly?). I flippantly commented that I should create a blog for Georgie since she has so much to say. I then considered this further and created a blog for her. We'll see how sustainable cat chatter is.

Today I met with an adult woman with no physical or mental impairments and did for her a technology-related task that would be equivalent to me tying her shoes for her. If you don't know how to tie your shoes I'll teach you how, but I'm not running over to tie your shoes every time you need it done. You know? It's days like this that make me crave cigarettes.

Speaking of cigarettes, when I was about 8 years old my much older brother got into the smoking habit out of peer pressure. He liked to do mean things to me (back then, now he's a great brother!) so he made me smoke a few cigarettes. He tried to teach me about the whole inhaling thing, but I couldn't grasp the concept. Shortly after, my mother found out about this incident and ... I'm not sure why she thought this was a good idea ... made us each smoke a cigarette in front of her. I liked it. I'm sure my brother did, too. I'm not sure that Mom caught on that this wasn't a punishment, but she never supplied us cigarettes again.

I didn't smoke again until college when I would randomly have cigarettes in the company of others who were smoking at bars or parties. One of my f*ck buddies introduced me to clove cigarettes, and I unfortunately liked those very much. Because none of my immediate friends smoked, my mom had just quit a few years earlier, and the idea of buying cigarettes embarrassed me to no end I wasn't able to buy whole packs of any kind, so I would go to the local tobacco shop and buy unwrapped clove cigarettes from a big pile, maybe 5 at a time. (Somehow 5 cigs are okay, but not 20. I dunno, my brain does what it wants.) I would sneak the clove cigarettes into my apartment and enjoy one every few weeks with my bedroom door locked and the bottom stuffed with a towel, window open in winter, spring, summer, or fall / sunshine, rain, snow, or hail so that my roommates wouldn't know what I was doing. I lived on a very steep hill in a city then, so I would sit on this platform in my bedroom and look out over the houses and streets and power lines and bridges and people and bumper-to-bumper traffic while I slowly dragged on my Cancer stick and allowed my stress level to slowly decline into nothingness. I didn't know how to inhale very much more than I did at age 8, but it worked for me.

I've not smoked since college, but every so often when situations are stressful or downright ass-inine I get the craving for a cigarette. I've even gone so far as to almost place an order online for Djarums, and I'm not sure I'll stop the craving until I actually go through with the transaction.

This post feels a little disjointed, but I do want to make one more point: I have a tendency to not do things that would call attention to myself because I don't like the positive or negative attention associated with my actions. The friends and family that surround me do not smoke (my brother finally quit a few years back), so if I did then I would be singled out. I'm pretty sure I'd be a casual smoker if my other relatives and friends did it and it was more acceptable in our crowd. Which makes me resent my situation sometimes. Like today. When I'd really like a vanilla Djarum. But I can't. Because someone would notice. And I can't handle that. Murr.

Last thing, I promise: Netflix sent us Thank You for Smoking which we will watch within the next few days. I'm pretty excited to see it. Yip yip!