Post No. 1 - The Beginning

Honestly, it is not much of a beginning as of yet. I still have three packs to go and you know, if you are or were a smoker, I can not let those three packs go to waste whether by throwing them in the garbage or, God forbid, giving them to someone else.

But here it is March 17, 2008 and I am putting myself in the mindset to lead a smokeless life.
How scary does that sound?
I look back at the past, oh, twelve years and wonder how this all began anyway. My mind wonders back to a fateful drive with a friend in an old eighty-something Chevy Cavalier.
As we drove down the road laughing and doing whatever bullshit we did, he pulled out a pack of Newport's and asked if I was interested in trying one. Of course, me being the good Catholic boy I was at that time said "No, my mom would kill me if she found out".
Well, after throwing the pack of sweet nicotine in the back seat and after an hour of chatting and pretty much doing nothing, my mind was still wondering. So, naturally, my curiosity got the better of me and said "What the hell, let's see what this is about".
So I took one out of the pack, and as I did, the first thing I noticed was the scent of a fresh pack of menthol cigarettes. This Scent was familiar because it was the same scent I remembered from when I was a child when my mom smoked.
It wasn't a bad smell, nor was it a good smell. It was just a smell.
I held the cigarette between my lips and kind of made a sour face as the taste overwhelmed. But still, there was no stopping my first experience.
I held that lighter up to that cigarette for about a solid two minutes trying to light that damned thing because I was unaware that it was necessary to suck in when lighting one of these things.
Who knew unless you were told?

As a side note, I didn't know about the whole lighting process until, about, two weeks or so after starting smoking.

So there we were, me and my friend, standing outside that Cavalier smoking cigarettes like cigars - hold the smoke in your mouth for a couple seconds then exhale. The closest we ever came to inhaling would have been when we got ballsy enough to breathe the smoke out of our noses. Now that is what I remember to be a burning sensation.

Of course, I have learned the art of inhaling, just so you know.

After that first experience, I recall not wanting to smoke anymore. I couldn't even finish that first cigarette. More than half wound up on the ground and smashed between my foot and the asphalt of that parking lot.

After a couple hours or more of boredom, it seemed like a perfect time to see if a second cigarette would be as offensive to me as the first.
Well, it wasn't.
But it was still not enough for me to believe that I was going to start smoking for good. I finished that whole cigarette, as well as two more that night, and went home swearing that this habit was not going to form.

For some reason, though, I was on my way to school and decided it was a good idea to buy a pack of cigarettes. Not just any cigarettes though, a pack of almighty Marlboros.
The red pack.

Whoa!!

I do not know what could have possessed someone to go from a soothing menthol cigarette like Newport to a harsh tar stick like Marlboro reds besides blatant ignorance.
Whatever it was, that was enough to get the ball rolling into this twelve year smoke out; and not the smoke out where you try to quit smoking that one day out of the year, but more like a cook out where you just barbecue and barbecue all day long.

Now, I know twelve years is not a long time to some lifer smokers, but I am beginning to believe that those twelve years were enough on my lungs.
It is time to give them that fresh breath of air they probably deserve.

Hey, I will also find out if it is fact that taste is not as strong when you smoke. If it is true then I can't wait to find out how good a tender, juicy steak really does taste.