Whiskey Smoke

I was a whiskey smoker for 15 years.  Through a sojourn to New York and back home to New Orleans, the labyrinth of law school, the cancer deaths of my parents, the beautiful struggle of marriage, hurricane Katrina, endless nights with my sleep-training children, and studying for the bar exam... sipping whiskey with a cigarette was an oh so satisfyingly nasty habit.

I'd stopped for months at a time, never smoked more than a pack a month, and didn't consider myself one of those fools for whom hoovering heaters would turn out to be a devastatingly bad series of decisions.  But I always went back to my personal Old Faithful.

Perhaps I just love to see the curls of breath swim from my body.  Maybe it made me feel more in control to make a choice that coughs in the face of the instinct of self-preservation.  Maybe I have an oral fixation.  Maybe I'm just a hype for nicotine.

Either way I've had enough and I haven't had a cigarette in quite a while.  It's about wanting to get back in to shape and how the ghosts of smokes past show up with a vengeance during a run or bike ride.  It's more about gaining health than quitting bad health, which is why I feel strong enough to really do it this time.

Well yesterday I had a test that, with the help of a serendipitous universe, I passed.  I saw a loose cigarette rolling around next to my car.  A Newport no less.

Now I know most folks wouldn't pick a cigarette up off the ground and smoke it.  But I hadn't had a puff in months and this was too easy.  Bumming is hard.  Buying packs is even harder.  But a loosey fallen before me, as if from my memory of Brooklyn bodegas before a pack of cigarettes began to cost more than a Beatles greatest hits album, was just too easy to pass.

But I hesitated because my son was on my shoulders at the time.  And I couldn't pick it up in front of him.

Now I had every intention to put him in the car seat and slickly grab that joe as I took the driver's seat.  But just then, chaos math invited someone to pull up in the parking spot next to me.  Not just anyone.  A stereotypically butch woman, skinny as a crackpipe, with a bandana blowing under a cocky "A" hat.

As soon as I saw her I thought, the only person in this parking lot who would pick up that cigarette and gladly smoke it besides me... is her.  What to do?

If I took the time to walk around the car and put the boy in, she'd get to it for sure.  If I squatted to get it now, the boy would see.  What do you think I did?

Well I already told you I passed.  I put the boy in the car seat and laughed out loud as old girl picked up that cigarette and walked off with a bounce in her step.  She glared back at me as if she thought I had judged her for it.  If only she knew what she and the universe conspired to do for me.

Thanks lady of randomness.  I still haven't had a cigarette in months.