The Village Idiot: Trying to remain smoke free
I quit smoking 11 years ago. I quit again 10 and a half years ago. Then I quit once more about 10 years ago. I didn’t think it was possible, but I kicked the habit. It’s been nine and a half years since my last cigarette. If I can do it, anyone can do it. Part of the reason I quit was that there were very few places where I could smoke anymore. Oh sure, the heart disease, the coughing, the shortness of breath, and the doctor’s refusal to treat me unless I quit all helped, but when I tried to start my three-pack-a-day habit again eight and a half years ago, I couldn’t. There was no place to start.
It wasn’t all that long ago that people smoked on elevators and in movie theaters. They smoked in restaurants, on buses, in doctor’s waiting rooms. Unless you were actually under an oxygen tent, you could smoke in hospitals. Even then people under the tents used to sneak them. That usually turned out messy. Now you can’t even smoke in the hospital parking lot, much less the hospital itself. I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard a story about one Texas prison that had banned smoking on Death Row … because it was bad for the inmates’ health.
They used to have smoking sections on airplanes. Now the entire terminal is smoke-free. Taking a vacation to a distant land is now a good first step to quitting. A nice 24-hour-long flight to Australia ought to break anyone’s habit. Of course, when you get there you’ll find that everyone smokes.
In New York City they recently banned smoking completely in bars and restaurants. When you book a hotel room now they ask you if you’d like a non-smoking room. The funny thing is, smoke doesn’t bother me very much. Other things that haven’t been banned annoy me much more than second-hand cigarette smoke. Children running around like crazy in restaurants — why hasn’t that been banned? Fat men who take off their shirts at ball games — make them stop. Those big, baggy extra-long pants that teen-agers wear — pass a resolution. One day I’d like to walk into a restaurant and have them ask me if I’d like to sit in the screaming, out-of-control children section or the child-free section? I’d like to go to a baseball game and have my choice of the no-swearing section or the men-must-keep-their-shirts on section.
Some supermarkets are starting to put in “no candy” checkout lanes so parents don’t have to get in huge, body-stiffening fights with their children over unnecessary treats. You see signs on convenience stores all the time that say, “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” That’s not a law, it’s just a good idea. I think we could use more “good idea” signs. I’d like to pull into a gas station/mini mart and see a sign that says, “Turn off your engine before pumping gas. No mullets.” Inside there might be a sign that says, “Must weigh under 300 pounds to buy snack sausages. We check ID.”
If we can have smoke-free sections at restaurants, why not have comb-over-free sections. How many meals have been spoiled by having to look at some guy with three little bits of yard-long hair stretched over his bald spot.
One day I’d like to walk into a restaurant and have them ask me if I’d like to sit in the cell-phone section or the non-cell-phone section.
“Either one is fine with me,” I’d say, “But is anything open in the smoke-free section? Say, next to the fireplace?”
(Jim Mullen is the author of “It Takes A Village Idiot: A Memoir of Life After the City.” He also contributes regularly to Entertainment Weekly, where he can be reached at [email protected].)