To Smoke or Not to Smoke

What’s something you do completely differently from how you were raised?

There is a moral to this story, but I am not exactly sure what it is. I have no idea what prompted this story, but I never got the chance to ask. I feel like this event took place on a Tuesday night because there was no TV playing at the time. Television was a constant in our household. On most nights we were in bed before prime time. It seemed like the only night of the week our family didn’t have on the television. Of course that’s purely conjecture. There may have been a moon landing two nights before. My mom wished the lunar landing were on another night. Sundays were for roller derby. This may have been a harbinger of things to come.

Our banal bathroom sat between my brother and my room and our parent’s room in a small hallway. It was dark already indicating it was a school night. The wallpaper was dreary green, and it sucked the light out of the room. The bathtub was filling up slowly and the mirrors were starting to steam. Then unexpectedly, our mother, who already was smoking a cigarette, decided to invest in our futures. My brother and I were glumly getting ready for a bath, and she told us that it would be a fun time to try a cigarette. In retrospect she used the same tactics with liver and onions. She didn’t make it with the onions. She didn’t like onions.

There was a method to the merriment that I still have not figured out.

This was said without any foreshadowing and for those who get all sentimental about good old-fashioned parenting this episode does not support that. I really can not explain it away to the moon landing. Those who love good conspiracy theory nay explain my mother’s methodology. This did really happen.

She did explain her reasoning as she slowly unraveled the blue strip around a spanking new pack of cigarettes. It seemed a little bit crazy on this evening or so it seemed. That is how I remembered it. I recall it being a weird night. As she opened the pack she explained her thinking. She nervously said, just because she smokes, she didn’t want us to smoke. Somebody is going to give you a cigarette, so why not it be me? She repeated her thinking that right now would be a suitable time to see if we like cigarettes. I was mesmerized as to why there was a camel on the package. It was the first time I saw a camel. In retrospect, there in lies the wisdom of the marketing of The Camel Company.

It felt like I was watching a movie. My brother was sitting on the toilet not actually going to the bathroom and I was out in the hallway reading some Matt Christopher, book on baseball and the bath kept running. I have no idea where my dad was during this episode. He was in the bedroom smoking a cigarette because these were days one didn’t have to go outside to smoke. He could’ve been at the bar, but I remember his presence on that evening. My dad was who he was, and he wasn’t going to interfere in this great big experiment about to take place on the second floor of the house on Delta Avenue.

She was kind enough to light the camel. She was that smart, knowing we didn’t know how to. I had been grounded once for playing with matches, my brother many times over. The judicial systems of our youth were capricious.

I stood out in the hallway, watching this entire scene unfold. We were afraid to talk back to our parents, but I held the line there and said I am not smoking a cigarette. My brother had other ideas. He was all in on this little roll of the dice.

My Mom said “here,” and without hesitation, my brother took a puff of the cigarette. I can’t say it was a large puff as who knows the whims of a first-time smoker. To me the world was now feeling more surreal. I walked over to the bathtub and turned the water off. It was ready to overflow its banks. I don’t recall seeing my brother and how he held the cigarette, but I remember the chaos that ensued. It didn’t take long; my brother was doubled over in front of the toilet depositing the dinner that we had a few hours earlier. I believe it was ham and string beans. My mother took a hand towel and ran hot water over it to then wipe the spittle off the corner of my brother’s mouth. She missed a spot and went back over to her work and there were no remnants, My brother soon after went to bed and slept for the night.

I walked over to the bathtub and jumped in, and the water was still surprisingly, ridiculously hot. When I got in the tub some water spilled over the sides. I let out a little water, and then put my head under the water. The water felt like body surfing at the beach. It was cool to pretend I was scuba diving. Imagination is a terrible thing to waste.

I never became a smoker. My brother smoked for years. He quit recently.