Tobacco remains a problem

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, October 2, 2007

What with the warming of the planet, cigarette smoking is becoming a threatened species-er, issue. Still, tobacco ranks pretty good as a problem.

What with everybody suing everybody connected to Big Tobacco, I got involved with a letter saying I was part of a class-action lawsuit against them that my health insurance was filing.

It's no surprise I'm re-involved — I've been a raging, preaching antismoker since I was 12 or 13, unafraid to reach out and pluck a burning cigarette from the very devil should I have to.

Or at least from mom.

"Well, good grief," I'm sure she said when she went to bed and found 12 copies of the Surgeon General's report against smoking under her pillow. Mom and dad both smoked. I didn't put anything under dad's pillow. Good sense told me to fight another day-you can't convert everyone. Nevertheless, if I couldn't smoke because it wasn't good for me, it seemed common sense even at that age that it must not be good for them either.

If I couldn't, they couldn't. And I couldn't. I tried. So'd my brother. He couldn't either. We helped each other as much as was humanly possible. Inhaled burning corn husks to toughen up our lungs. "Hey! Nice smoke ring." That said in our fort out in the grove on the farm, where we tried to perfect the art of inducing lung cancer. "Cough, cough!" That said next. We French inhaled burning corn husk, pushing smoke out our mouth up our nose. "Cooouuuggghhhh, haaaack!" Couldn't do it.

We had a cousin who helped us try to make the grade. He was a natural. He could do it all-move the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other without his hands; play cards with it hanging from his lip and smoke getting in his eyes. We tried to imitate him. We turned green. He inhaled. We coughed. We tried to walk. Fell over, dizzied by our new vice. The Lucky Strike sweepstakes? We had a shot until we threw up. It was all for naught. We were branded for life. NONSMOKERS! Wimps. Couldn't cut it.

You can begin to see why I went after my parents with such a vengeance. I was the rightful heir upon achieving adulthood to all their vices, as I saw it. My inalienable right was to inherit my slice of the pie, including inhaling. It was a great shock to me when I first realized I wasn't going to be able to cut it. There was this great adult thing in front of me, way beyond my reach.

To make up for being a NONSMOKER, when I got a driver's license and a car, I drove faster than my parents did. Than any grownup did, matter of fact. The problem was, since I couldn't kill myself smoking, I compensated by trying to do so driving like a maniac. I scared several people nearly to death, long before they could have a chance to expire from lung cancer.

I couldn't smoke. Life was slipping away from me.

So I went after my parents. Mom buckled first. Really, at some subconscious level, I think she knew she shouldn't be smoking. I was aggressive because I figured her guilty conscience would prevent her from really punishing me. It was touch and go at that Christmas family get together, though. You know what they're like-every table in the house end to end in the living room, stretching into the dining room. Tons of people and food there. Everyone was done eating and was lighting up. Mom too. Only I had stuffed farmer match heads in her cigarettes, and when she lit up, the end of her cigarette went off like a miniature flame thrower. Everyone laughed.

I cowered. I hadn't thought about her lighting one up in this scenario. She didn't do much, put it down and lit another. They were all booby trapped. What an awful thing to do to one's mother, who we now know had the inalienable right to smoke herself to death, along with all the company. At first I thought I was dead. That look on her face.

But then she laughed along with everyone.

She quit soon after. It made her nervous wondering what cigarette I had booby trapped, and with what. But I never got to smoke. Now I'm suing Big Tobacco, but for the wrong reason. I want to sue for them not making one that I could smoke.

I'm going to ask for a million and a half. Split it with my kids.

Mom would like that.

Alan Linda writes from his home in New York Mills.