Caught Smoking

Like any curious teenager, I took up smoking, in a classic scene, three young boys walking down an empty railroad track in the wintertime. Literally, on a dare I took my first puff (menthol) and fell deep into the misguided, mystifying, alluring guise of my new persona. Now I am cool. Yeah, I smoked on and off until I was about forty.

I often said that smoking was hard for me to give up because there was no prosthetic for smoking. You quit, you leave a void and that was the issue for me. I would make some really great attempts though, once off the nicotine for six years, but alas, it would reappear in my life.

Then, I did find a prosthetic, in the least of places I had ever considered to look. Running. I ran in high school and got some awards. When I was forty I rediscovered running. I lost weight. I felt better. And I said goodbye to cigarettes forever.

This is an early cigarette story though. So let’s get to it.

After leaving the railroad track, I began to buy and swipe packs of cigarettes. I’m not proud of those early teen days. Years later I went back to the pharmacy I had recklessly pillaged in my teens and dropped hundred bucks on a counter and walked out. I felt better.

Smoking had its own problems. Everything had to be hidden. Alerted parents would be angry and punishing. I was good at the hiding part for quite a while. But, one dark cloudless winter night I was on the prowl with my latest gang. We liked to drink beer and smoke. Ironically as we crawled through the dark neighborhood streets, we talked about astute topics, delving into science, religion and famous rock stars. We examined Henry David Thoreau and Black Sabbath.

As we turned the corner, a car pulled up to our group. I had a beer in one hand and a cigarette in my other. It was my parents. My mother’s window came down.
“GET IN THE CAR!” I didn’t get to finish my thought on Thoreau. I left a frozen snowy world and crawled into an automobile that was as equally ice cold. “I was holding the cigarette for Scott”, I falsely explained. We were two blocks from home and my mother needed the whole length of it to explain in detail how my new grounding was going to work. She stormed out of the car and into the house. As I started for the house with head down, my father stopped me. “Mike, I used to smoke and drink too when I was young, but I never held another man’s cigarette, never. You’re busted. I don’t want any of my children smoking under the roof of my house.” And that was it. He was right and I was in trouble and now caught in a lie.

It was summer now. My dad had decided it was time to replace the old roof on our house. Would he hire a contractor? Are you kidding me? He has three boys. This was a family job. I found myself for four weeks on four different corners of our roof. I learned a little bit about roofing that summer.

One day while putting the first row on the south edge of the house just above the gutter, I decided I wanted a smoke. My brothers were on the other side and my dad was nowhere around. I lit up and pulled a slow drag in deep and exhaled with satisfaction and enjoyment. Then my dad appeared on a ladder in front and just below me and caught me red-handed. “Mike, I told you that no child of mine will smoke under my roof!”

I looked down at my position. “But dad, I’m above your roof.”

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