Why did you start smoking?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Approximately the 4th week of January, 1989
Ft. Irwin, CA

Thanks to the machinations of the greasy bastards at DynaCorps (the civillian contractors hired to maintain the vehicle fleet at Ft. Irwin’s National Training Center), I get stuck with a piece of crap tank that breaks down on the first day of maneuvers, and can’t be fixed anytime soon because there’s no replacement part.

Anywhere.

In the entire U.S. Army inventory.

SO I sit for three friggin’ weeks in the field trains, getting dragged from place to place by a Whale, getting ignored, or worse, insulted because the friggin’s lazy-assed civillian contractors never properly torqued the Right Drive Sprocket (16 1-1/8" bolts torqued to 900 fl-lbs each), and now the Right Drive Sprocket Hub is ruined. It seems the DynaCorps technicians couldn’t be bothered to set up the power dyne, and manually put about 200 ft-lbs per bolt with a socket, t-bar and cheater pipe, then slapped a quick coat of paint on it.

Our supply sergeant can’t be bothered to bring by any chow, the field trains won’t feed us (but they sure as hell want us pulling guard duty 24-7!), and we resort to stealing food and water. For three weeks.

When the exercise finally ends, and we get dragged back to DynaCorp’s motorpool, we find that not only was the missing part actually in the Army inventory, it was sitting in DynaCorps’ parts room gathering dust.

We replace the magic widget, and perform a thorough post-op check on our tank (it’s not too hard, we haven’t done a damned thing with it after Day 1 of the training rotation!) and hand our paperwork over to the DynaCorps technicians, who then begin going over the tank themselves.

They find over 300 things wrong with the tank; over 30 of them are “deadline” items that appear on a special DynaCorps in-house maintenance bulleting, not available to or used by the regular Army. But we must adhere to their standards, so we begin a lenghty, 4-day process of generating scads of paperwork.

We (my crew and I) turn this massive pile of documents over to our own battalion PLL (Parts and Labor Listings) for processing, with dreams of hot showers, hot food and finally some sleep.

The next day, I stop by the PLL truck to check on the status of my paperwork.

“What paperwork?” they ask.

“My paperwork, document tracking number such-and-such.” I reply.

After consulting a clipboard, he tells me they never received any such documents, and never issued that document tracking number. I was told to go back and redo my paperwork.

After wrestling me to the ground and sitting on me until I calmed down enough to preclude Homicide By Blunt Trauma Instrument, one of my platoon mates hands me a smoke and tells me to calm down some more.

That first hit of nicotine changed my entire perspective (and it helped that the battalion XO, Major Bullock, tore the PLL clerks a new one and had them turn the PLL van inside out and upside down looking for our paperwork, which was eventually found; the PLL clerk pulled the document number, but never recorded it on the clipboard, which was no longer being used after me as I was the very last one in the battalion to turn anything in).

After that, I found nicotine to be an excellent coping mechanism for the gross stupidity, rampant incompetence, and wanton negligence of my battalion HQ & Maintenance staff.

The first time I quit was during Desert Storm, amazingly enough. I just ran out and had no desire for another. That happy state of affairs lasted until October 1991, when, on my way out of the Army, my Company First Sergeant decided to saddle me with every shit detail he could imagine (when I was supposed to be spending my time out-processing), and he was a devious, evil, inventive bastard.

In his eyes, I was a traitor to my country for leaving the Army, and he wasn’t letting me go without doing everything possible within his power to make me one miserable sonofabitch.

It’s been downhill since then.

22

I was gonna say, “Stupid, I guess,” but others beat me to it. So here’s a new one:

It made me a rebel! Yes, I was making trouble! I got caught smoking behind the girls’ locker room with my rebel girlfriend in 7th grade. They sent us to “smoking class.” We watched horrible films, passed notes, and made lots of ooohs and aaahs at the film of black lung tissue and gooey black holes in bottom lips from dip. Then, on break we all went and had a couple of smokes. We were so REBELLIOUS! We made teachers angry; parents cry in dismay; other random adults on the street go tsk tsk. It was a barrel of laughs.

Yup. Stupid, I guess. :smack:

23

This may be more unusual (and longer) than most …

I was 16. I was a full-time software programmer & part-time high school student. Not so rare today, but this was the early 1970s. At any rate, I ended up with a 2-month stint at a client company doing mods to the software my employer had sold them.

I got put in a 8x10 office that already had 3 bookkeepers, all fat, female, & old (i.e. mid 30s). My “desk” had been their student-sized credenza-for-giant-piles-of-papers. The room was so small I had to get out of my chair and roll it into the hallway to make room for two of them to get to/from their desks. It was real tight in there before I showed up.

To say they resented the intrusion in their world would be the understatement of the century. They made their feelings known loud and clear to all & sundry, including the hapless, clueless, useless Office Manager. He shrugged and said “Tough.”

They all smoked more or less constantly. I didn’t smoke. At all. Didn’t much like it either. This was long before non-smokers had any “rights”, so I knew I had to tough it out.

No dice. I couldn’t hack it. On Day 3 I asked if they’d mind smoking less so I could breath. They were furious. It had seemed like a reasonable request to me, which demonstrates just how socially clueless I was in my youth.

On Day 5 I screwed up my courage and asked them if they could maybe at least do it in unison, so they’d all smoke and then they’d all not for 20 minutes. That was not a popular suggestion either. I was a real slow learner on the win friends & influence people program.

Or at least the “win friends” part.

On Saturday I went down to the local drugstore & bought a pack of White Owl New Yorkers. 5 stogies for 93 cents, plus tax gave me a penny change for my $1. They’d probably been on the shelf rack for 2 months. Went home & smoked one out back. Nearly died. On Sunday I smoked 2. Felt bad, but didn’t puke.

On Monday I mananged the Dr Pepper trifecta, one at 10am, 2pm and 4pm. The ladies were not amused. I kept that up through Thursday, actually managing a 4th New Yorker on Thursday, at 8am to start the day right. They still tasted nasty (what do you expect for 18 cents apiece retail?) but I was sorta enjoying the hypoxia high.

The ladies were beyond livid. They’d long since stopped speaking to me. The sullen hate-waves they were putting out was much thicker than the hybrid smoke in the tiny airless room.

On Friday morning I came in to find my credenza/desk was 30 feet away in a wide spot in a hall. My terminal, my papers, my office tools; all were moved perfectly.

Aaah, a private office, shared with no one. And umpteen hundred square feet to boot! I even had a window, though it was 45 feet away. What’s not to like? And gloriously smoke-free. Aaaah!!

I kept my ashtray prominently displayed on my desk with my lighter and a New Yorker at the ready. I smoked one at lunch each week just to keep the deterrence value up.

I didn’t win any friends, but I did know how to influence people.
I haven’t smoked one of those nasty rags since that gig ended almost 30 years ago, although I do still enjoy a fine quality cigar every few months.

Cigarettes? Never smoiked one in my life & don’t intend to. They stink. They burn your eyes. Good cigars, on the other hand, have a wonderful aroma. Bad cigars just have stench. New Yorkers are very bad cigars.

24

Billie Smallegs threatened to tell everyone lies about me unless I smoked with her. Seventeen years later, I quit. Yes, I was stupid. However, February 7/2005 will be my five-year quit anniversary.

25

The reason I started smoking, I realise now, was that I thought it would impress girls. Specifically, the girls me and a friend were hanging out with in a pub in 1984. They were quite cute, and they all smoked, so we pretended that we did too. I was drunk enough to tolerate having tobacco smoke in my lungs, and smoked an entire pack that evening.

And I only managed to give up the cigarettes a couple of years ago, nearly nineteen years later :frowning:

26

I was young and stupid.

I worked at a food court and all of my friends there smoked. The smokers got extra time for “smoke breaks” and it seemed like all the cool stuff happened during them. I started to be there too.

I quit for about 5 years, then I started again. The second time, I worked as a waitress at a resort, we worked in three shifts and had a unpaid hour or two in between. Everyone smoked, there was nothing else to do. Sure there were a few non-smokers, but all they did was sit and read by themselves, I like to chat with others.

27

Because it was cool.

However, I didn’t know to inhale until perhaps my 5th or 6th cigarette ever. Well let me just tell you that first drag into the lungs sealed that deal. My hopelessly addictive personality seized on those suckers like remora on a shark.

Sad thing perhaps? It’s 13 years later, and I still love it.

28

Mmm, I could use a smoke right now…

29

I was, oh, 12 or 13 or so. I had grown up in a smoking household, and had started “smoking” by although not inhaling. I had two thoughts on the matter: 1. I would look cool and 2. If I smoked, maybe all the smoke from other people’s cigarettes wouldn’t bother me so much.

But then my friend had to point out to me that I was “doing it wrong” by not inhaling. So I learned. And I got hooked. And I discovered that yes indeedy, it did make me stay thin, which is right up there on a teenage girl’s list of priorities. I smoked for the next 20 years or so.

I finally quit for good about 6 1/2 yrs ago…not a puff since (I can’t…if I do, I smoke again and I know that).

30

I was an exchange student in Mexico, and I was encouraged to try it by my host family’s cousins. That was why I took the first drag. Why I took the second…? Because I had coughed and hacked so badly after the first, and I was determined not to let it BEAT me.

Fortunately, I never smoked more than a half pack a day, and stopped within a year. And it was still at least 10 years before I didn’t long for a cigarette at times.

31

Because everyone I know smokes. Because the entire (very small) gay community at the university I attend smokes and I wanted to fit in. Because I’ve always loved the smell of cigarette smoke, even before I was a smoker. Because a cigarette is SO good with beer. Because I was curious.

In other words, I had no good reason and I’m a damn fool. :rolleyes:

Typically Sunday, I was thinking the exact same thing.

32

I smoked pot in college. Once in a while I couldn’t get pot, and I smoked cigs for a much less satisfying high. The high went away, but the cigs didn’t.

33

Because I fell madly, deeply, and hopelessly in love with the coolest boy in 9th grade, and I wanted a reason to talk to him. I figured that if I smoked, I could go up to him and bum a cigarette, and that would be the icebreaker I needed.

It worked, but the addiction to the cigarettes lasted almost a decade longer than the attraction to the boy. And both of them were bad news in the end.

34

A non-smoker interjects…

In my mind, I’ve been asking the same question to smokers for the past four years or so.
The reason is that, one cold morning, I stopped into a convenience store on the way to work and outside stood a high-school-age boy (waiting for the bus?) smoking a cigarette. His un-cigarette-encumbered hand was thrust into his front pocket and his posture told you that he was freezing his hiney off; ostensibly so that he could “enjoy” that smoke, since smoking inside the store was forbidden.
On my way back out of the store, I noticed he was still standing there finishing that same(?) cigarette. Only this time, I noticed that he’d started to cough. You know, that raspy-phlegmy sound that comes from trying to expel mucus from your lungs?
I wondered then how many cigarettes per day one would have to smoke in order to gain THAT kind of cough. Especially since I believe that this young man hadn’t even reached the age where he could legally purchase cigarettes.

35

I thought it looked cool and I was young and still in that thinking-I’m-invincible phase. Plus, nobody in my immediate family smoked so I really didn’t know how many unpleasant side effects it had.

36

Well ya’ know. That Joe Camel was such a major infuence in my life… :rolleyes:

37

In high school, many of my friends smoked, and after a year or so of scoffing at them for it, I became curious about what the attraction could be. My dad smoked, and I knew that cigarettes were addictive from health class information. I was out one night with some friends when I was about fifteen or so, and the whole crew besides me lit up. I decided I didn’t want to be left out, and asked for a cigarette. They were all horrified since I was the goody-two-shoes of the group, and tried, somewhat half-heartedly, to talk me out of it. Finally one of the girls gave me a cigarette. I had a bit of trouble with it, as many new smokers do. I managed to finish it, though it made me cough, and thought that was that. A few weeks later, I bummed another cigarette off my best friend just to see if it would be any better. I did think smoking looked cool. I started smoking a cigarette every once in a while after that. I don’t think I was ever really addicted. I had a bad patch when I was twenty and working a job that I hated for about three months. I smoked about a half pack a day then, but quit when I quit the job. I haven’t had a cigarette in about three and a half years. I used to have a roommate who smoked, and I would go downstairs and out to the porch to keep her company while she smoked (we had to go outside) and sometimes she gave me a cigarette. I want one sometimes, when something is bothering me.

Still trying to get Dad to quit, though.

38

I started because I was a rebel without a brain. The ONLY reason I started was to annoy my father, by the time he accepted I was an “adult” (I was all of 16) I was addicted. More then 20 years later the only one it annoys is me. I have nooooooooo will power.

I swear if the child takes it up to annoy me I will do bodily injury to him…I wish my father had taken that approach.

39

I’m a non-smoker. I have asthma, smoking would be really bad news. I’ve always known smoking was a bad idea. And yet I still tried to take it up in college. :wally Why? Because everyone who was preparing for oral exams for languages smoked before hand to calm their nerves while I sat there doodling or drinking coffee and not smoking. I wanted to be able to take a drag on a cigarette and get that lovely feeling of calm they said they got from it too, even if it was just a conditioned response. Because we had a tavern on campus and everyone who “only smoked when they drank” was lighting up around me when we went for drinkies after class.

Because the two flat-out coolest people I knew smoked, and although they already liked me, I wanted to be like them. I was quite consciously playing the Rebel Without a Cause -what am I rebelling against? What have you got? (All the same, keeping my grades up, thank goodness the cool set at that point were also frenetic over-acheivers of the work hard - party harder school of thought.)

Why didn’t I end up smoking? Because the two coolest people I knew let me bum a cigarette once when they were having a smoke break, and when it became apparent to them that it was my second cigarette in my whole life, took it back from me and wouldn’t let me have any. Ever.

Told you they were cool :slight_smile:

So in spite of being a non-smoker and thinking smoking is a horrible health-risk, I’m right there with the people who took it up for what look like inexplicable reasons.

40

I was 17, and the idea of shortening my life span appealed to me at the time. I enjoyed the high too.

Never got addicted though, and only have a cigarette every couple of months.