In the fourth grade, my friend Michael would sneak a pack of Kents from his mother’s carton and, after school, a bunch of us would go to the woods by Nichols Park and light up. We used the code word “Superman” to refer to the Kent cigarettes, with Superman being Clark Kent.
I stopped smoking at the age of 37, noticing I’d developed a little cough whenever I laughed. And going upstairs too fast seemed to use a lot of breath. Seven years later, discussing divorce with my soon-to-be ex-wife, I asked her to give me one of her Kools, and I didn’t stop smoking again until I was 57.
During all this time, while my son was growing up, I hid my smoking from him because my father had always had an unfiltered Lucky Strike or Camel cigarette hanging from his mouth, and I believed his example had led to my addiction to smoking. Both he and my grandfather died of lung cancer, so I knew the likely score.
I use the word addiction, by the way, not to describe a physical addiction, but a psychological one. Whenever I stopped, I felt no physical effects, other than better breathing after a time, but I craved the whole ritual. If munching on snacks could take the place of smoking, the addiction didn’t seem to me to be anything chemical, but simply mental fidgeting.
Anyway, the familiar lack of breath and a persistent slight soreness in my throat finally led me once again onto the straight-and-narrow and boring. Then, with Social Security kicking in to free me from the need for a full-time job, and with time on my hands and a convenient nearby park where I could smoke outside the home, I started yet again. I loved it, knowing all the while I had to quit soon. With my older lungs, the familiar lack of breath, small cough, and throat soreness came back alarmingly fast.
At the same time, I discovered my son was a smoker, a fact he’d quietly kept hidden from me. I figured it must have been his mother who, after a brief attempt at quitting soon after we married, had puffed away all through his early years. Now that he was grown-up and smoking, I admitted to him I’d smoked throughout much of my life, including his childhood, but kept it hidden so he wouldn’t smoke. I advised how deadly it was, but he’s a sort who keeps his own counsel and wasn’t about to quit.
So we started smoking together. Moving to Las Vegas, on our wild ride west, we had a great time smoking in the car and outside the motel rooms, looking at the wondrous western nighttime skies. It was a wonderful bonding experience, with cigarette breaks bringing us together. I started feeling guilty, however, because I smoked lots more than he did, and it seemed my constant lighting up was causing him to smoke more than he ever had.
Las Vegas has its own unique character that includes, for some reason, a phenomenal number of “smoke shops.” Nearly every strip mall has one, with just that name in neon: “Smoke Shop.” Growing disenchanted with my smoking once again, I noticed something new they were offering: electronic cigarettes. These are battery tubes disguised to look like the tobacco end of a cigarette, with a vapor-producing attachment that looks like the filter. A liquid in the heated “filter” dispenses nicotine and a water-vapor that looks just like smoke. It seemed silly, but because I liked everything about smoking except for the smoke going into my lungs, I decided to try this smoke-free substitute, and I liked it.
In fact, I now like it better than real smoking.
Since there is no smoke—just that imitation water-vapor without odor—I can “smoke” anywhere. Moreover, without such harmful effects as shortness of breath or throat soreness, I’m able to do it all the time (whatever the cause, I truly am an addict). I got a couple of them, so one can be charging (in my laptop’s USB port) while I run down the battery puffing away on the other. When I stop, I just drop the unit in my shirt pocket until I feel like “smoking” again, the thing waiting without heat or smell to be pulled out and instantly brought back to life. I even like the cool blue light that tells me when it needs to be recharged.
Almost unbelievably, I think this ridiculous substitute truly is a life-saver; at least until it’s found that the fluid they use causes some horrible affliction. But then again, you can’t have everything.
Bruce MacIntyre spends most of his time writing in his condominium at the outskirts of Las Vegas. Send comments via the opinion editor at econnolly@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 17-24, 2011.