Give Us One Then!
I wanted to do a sort of follow up post after this one that I did the other week. As I explained in that post, I’m not a miss goody two shoes. Most of my life up until a couple of years ago has been spent pursuing the joys of the weed.
Both my parents smoked and in our household it was the norm for people to smoke in and around the house. My parents always insisted that they were now hooked and when they first started smoking they didn’t realise the detriment to their lives. Total rubbish, everyone knew smoking could cause lung cancer.
I clearly remember actively trying to get them to stop. Hiding their cigarettes from them was a popular method. This would only enrage them, they knew I had hidden them. A conclusion they reached having checked all the normal places they would put the packet.
Eventually I stopped trying to get them to stop. I clearly remember being dragged up on to the upper deck of the bus where smoking was permitted and having to sit in an atmosphere you could cut with a knife. Just so my parent could smoke. Strange, but in those days it wasn’t really frowned upon to drag your offspring upstairs to inhale your fumes.
All things conspired to me growing up to be a smoker myself. Only my parents didn’t realise just how young I was when I first started. I don’t clearly recall how old I was but can hazard a guess based on my friends and activities around that time. Probably about…eight years old. Young I know but I had friends who started to smoke at that age too.
I had a fortunate childhood. No poverty and lots of surrounding open countryside and fresh air around me. Don’t get me wrong we weren’t blessed with a fortune, just comfortably well off. Like most of the families in the area. A product of a working class family and grateful for having such a grounding in life. As a result I never take anything for granted.
As children we would meet up in the local countryside to enjoy the long days and play. I don’t recall who brought the first packet of fags but I do recall trying one and turning a funny shade of green as I proceeded to cough up a lung. On reflection, why did I persist? I could have just stopped there. I suppose I thought I looked grown up, mature just like every other deluded child who takes their first draw of the dreaded weed.
I coughed my way through the cigarette and from that moment on I was hooked. Not in the sense of addiction but the thrill of doing something adults do, something naughty. After that first go at it all six of us used to gather together our spending money to buy a pack of ten. Naively, we bought Consulate (one of the first menthol brands) believing that you could not detect them on your breath.
Shop keepers back then would serve children with cigarettes in the belief that they were being bought for the parents. It wasn’t unknown for a parent to ask a child to go to the shops to buy them a packet of cigarettes. So the shopkeepers never questioned who they were for. The fact that your parents smoked Players and you were in there buying Consulate, not in twenty’s but in ten’s never aroused suspicion. Lol. More like they turned a blind eye.
We would sometimes draw lots for who was going to the shops to buy the cigarettes. More often than not we would then decide that a particular member looked older than the rest of us that day and they should go. 😀 Hiding the packet for next time was always fun. This was a shared responsibility. Each of us taking turns. I always found somewhere outside to hide them, I just couldn’t run the risk of being caught. Under the bin outside was a favourite.
The ritual of congregating on the field and having a crafty cigarette went on for years and as I became bolder and older I would often pinch the odd cigarette from my parents. This went on in to my teens, when I became quite brazen and would pinch twenty sometimes as they bought by the 200’s. My best friend and I would smoke them outside in the garden when my parents weren’t around.
As I grew older I started to smoke in my room when my parents were out. The house always smelled of smoke anyway, so I figured that I would be able to get away with it. I even had an ashtray under my bed. 🙂 Can you believe I actually got away with this until I was seventeen, when I came clean and admitted that I smoked.
Well, what could my parents say? They both smoked. I recall my mum was none too happy but didn’t chastise me as I was now old enough to partake. But I never came clean about just how long I had been smoking not until years later. She never knew.
I can definitely relate. How many times I’d go to the shop for my mother, then later, for my foster mother, and shopkeepers didn’t question it (the same brand). I got caught so many times though, so many that I kind of adapted to it. The last time I got caught was with my foster mother. I was seventeen and a bit, in my final year at high school, and one of her family acquaintances told her (because their son told them -a stoolie), and I’ll never forget her asking me, all serious, ‘Do you smoke?’ and me looking at her in the eye and replying, ‘Occasionally’ (LOL). But the very first time I got busted by my mother, I shit bricks. I was experimenting with a schoolfriend, she smelled it on me, and out came the wooden spoon (traditional Mediterranean coporeal punishment).
My best friend when I was about 12 smoked. her story was similar to yours. her parents did and she just hid it. When they found out, there wasn’t much they could do.
I feel you there. Both my parents smoked. As a kid, I tried to get them to stop smoking. I even went as far as to hide there cigarettes. That only got me grounded. Now I smoke.
You aren’t the only ones that start smoking because parents do. Seems that non-smokers raise non-smokers and smokers raise smokers by default. It’s hard because I’ve watched the health problems that affected my grandmother and now my father in-law. Then I think about the cost of the cigarettes alone. Addictions are hard to beat though.
Suze ya naughty thang! I am social smoker, admittedly and I can go for a whole month with no cigarette. I never smoked as a teen and my parents only smoked Reefer Madness, LOL.
Stress brings out the smoker in me, however, I do not smoke in front of my children or inside (I don’t like the smell of stale smoke- ew)
That reminds me, I have not had a cigarette today. I think I shall go read one of your sexy stories and have some fun with myself and then grab a shmoke.
I started smoking when I was 16. It was the cool thing to do, actors smoked, we had commercials back then that would advertise you to smoke there stuff. Yeh it was cool alright.
In my lifetime I have walked cold turkey away from crank, coke and alcohol, just one thing I have never been able to walk away from. Ciggerettes!!
I weaze when I breathe, everything I do makes me short of breathe, I cough up some of the ugliest shit you could ever imagine, and I still smoke.
Have I ever had regrets, yes , just one.
I wish I NEVER started! It will kill me before my time!
Good article Suze.
(however, YOUR lungs still look good to me!)
My dad smoked while in the merchant navy but quit long before I was born. I never smoked and I am sure my parents would have known if I did. It is probably easier for children with parents who smoke to get away with it because the smell wouldnt be noticed. Mr SD’s parents, who both smoke, gave us a lounge and it took forever to get the smell out. I think the smell has been enough to prevent me from ever starting.
Ms SD
It’s something I can’t kick, Suze! It is, however, my only vice – unless the Domme bit is also a vice (tho’ I can’t imagine why?!). We don’t smoke indoors and have given up several times, but we still do it…..and I admit to both parents having been smokers! I started when I was 15 – O-Level year. Any excuse, eh! 😉
I have never even tried to smoke a cigarette. I guess I’m not one of the cool kids 🙂
Ana, Ouch! I never actually got caught. I’m surprised I didn’t what with having an ashtray under my bed too. It was my responsibility to clean my own room, I suppose that is what saved me from discovery.
Nikki, I used to get in to some right trouble for hiding their cigarettes, I stopped doing it in the end it wasn’t worth the hassle.
Devil, true. I have friends whose parents didn’t smoke and they don’t either.
Spitfire, I didn’t smoke inside either, I hated the smell too. Strange how you can smoke but don’t like the smell.
Storm, it is never too late to try to stop. I never thought I would do it. One day I just decided that I was quitting and went cold turkey. Up until then I had tried everything and failed over and over again. I think you reach a point where you are ready to do it and it works. Good luck!
Ms SD, I agree it is easier to get away with it if your parents smoke. Since stopping I dislike the smell even more.
Sky, you will manage to do it one day. We all need our vices! 😉