Day Four & Three-Quarters

I thought I was done for the day, but then I remembered something my dad used to say: “Don’t smoke your cigarettes to the butt. The part near the butt is the worst part for you.”  So I interpreted that as meaning that it is perfectly healthy to smoke as long as you don’t smoke your cigarettes to the butt! No butts about it!  (Aargh, really bad pun.)

I am frugal and that’s putting it mildly. Would I waste two millimeters of a cigarette? Uh-uh. Noooo, I smoke my cigarettes in full. If for some reason I must stop smoking prior to finishing my cigarette, I carefully extinguish the flame and save the rest of the smoke for later, at which time I smoke it to the butt. 

Is there any one reason that I consider a valid reason to quit? Yes, really, there’s only one: vanity. At 38 the lines on my face are getting clearer and clearer, and I find myself obsessing over things like anti-wrinkle creams, skin rejuvenators, ways to hide the fucking lines! We live in a youth-oriented culture, ain’t no doubt about it. And people have assessed my age at as low as 29, but I think they’re being generous. I see the lines and I don’t lie to myself. I have the bathroom from hell to deal with, though. The lighting in my bathroom makes a pore look like a canyon, so you can imagine what a laugh line looks like. Either I quit smoking now or I start a facelift fund. I don’t have children—no college funds to deal with. Yes, a facelift fund. Banks should offer RVFFs, Registered Vanity Facelift Funds, that come complete with tax incentives.  (And when you stop to think about it, to consider the tax dollars the government squeezes out of us, we smokers should get a tax break somewhere along the line!)

I wonder how many people I have upset or offended at this point. Don’t worry. Those niggling health hazards are still buzzing around my brain, and I have but 12 cigarettes remaining in my “last pack.”  Think of this as my requiem for cigarettes. How poetic is that?