CIGARETTES

[Edwin Partridge <edwin.partridge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alan Bonander, and other ex-smokers, and still-smokers,

I don't really want to turn this into a SMOKER list -- but ----

We have similar stories, but I'm a little (?) older than you, Alan. I
worked summers in a coal and lumber yard. At lunchtime, we would take up
a collection of pennies, and I, the kid, was sent across the tracks to a
small corner store, to buy a pack of cigarettes to share. Sometimes we
bought a pack of cheap cigarettes for 8 cents, but some days we splurged
and had the best cigarettes for 10 cents, like Camels (I'd walk, run,
jump, swim, fly, your choice, a mile), or Lucky Strikes (before the
green went to war). In town, the corner cigar store, with a genuine
wooden indian (whoops! -- native american) holding a bundle of cigars,
sold single cigarettes for one cent, any brand. There was a perpetual
flame to light your cigarette, or cigar, or whatever. Later, I vowed
that when a pack of cigarettes went over 25 cents, I wouldn't be able to
afford it, and I would quit smoking.

Just about exactly a year ago, I was in the hospital for the first one
of two three-week sessions to remove a cancer on my colon. This was
after a hernia and a hydracele, life-threatening hyper-thyroidism, and
related double vision (Graves Disease), and a diagnosis of Parkinson's
Disease, all within three years. For some reason, I decided that I did
not smoke cigarettes any more. I told my wife where I hid my cigarettes,
and I told her to throw them away before I came home.

Over the many years, I had often wanted to quit, and tried to quit, or
even had quit, (as some one else has said here, two or three times on
some days), but I had never before *decided* to quit. And it worked. I
think it is a case of self hypnosis. On two, or maybe three occasions,
during the last year, I have tried to smoke a cigarette. I can't take
more than two or three puffs.

So take heart all you poor still-smokers, if Alan and I could quit,
anybody can, even you. Parkinson's Disease is not our decision, but
smoking cigarettes is.

From: edwin.partridge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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