kybearfuzz (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kybearfuzz) wrote2007-03-19 09:48 pm
kybearfuzz) wrote2007-03-19 09:48 pm
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A Journey for a Smoker
I don't smoke. I grew up around my mom and her siblings, all of whom were smokers. My sister is a smoker and my twin dips snuff. It is not on some moral high ground that I never took it up, but rather I just didn't enjoy any time I tried it. I spoke with my mom this weekend and she's not smoked since January thanks to new medications. I am happy to hear that.
My mom's youngest sister is my aunt Ruth Ann who is possibly the funniest member of my family. I've written about her before. I remember the time she told me how much effort it took for her to START smoking...
Being the youngest of seven children and the "oops" baby, Ruth grew up around siblings who were much older. All of them were smokers and she longed to be "adult" like the rest of them. My grandmother, who did not smoke, tried her best to prevent her from following suit. Ruth told me how she tried smoking on three different occasions.
At the age of six, she had taken her older brother's cigarettes and hid behind his car. Being so young, she couldn't have realized that the rising smoke from her repeated drags on the cigarettes would float up and be visible from the other side of the car. Mother Adams, my grandmother, tanned her hide for that one, she said.
One evening, when she was 13 or so, she was getting ready for bed. Wearing pajama bottoms my mom had sewn for her, she tucked a single cigarette into the waistband and went to the bathroom to light up. Walking past my grandmother who was sitting on the phone, she made it to the bathroom and reached for the cigarette only to find it gone. Cursing that my mom had not put pockets in the PJ bottoms, she ripped them off and shook them up and down, praying that the cigarette would fall out to no avail. Thinking it fell out on her way to the bathroom, she put her PJ's back on and casually walked back out into the hallway, scanning the floor the missing fag (literal use of the word). Making her way back to her bedroom, she searched the carpet for the cigarette again and still never spotted it. Deciding to give it one last search, she made it back to the hallway, looking around the floor again very carefully but not suspiciously. Finally she looked up to see my grandmother, still talking on the phone, casually cradling the cigarette between her fingers as though she was enjoying it herself with a wicked smile on her face. I call this "round two" and Ruth lost on a TKO.
When she was sixteen, she finally had grown quite crafty and created the perfect solution to smoking. She had cut a small hole in the wire screen on her bedroom window. Positioning a fan on the other side of her, blowing toward the window, she could smoke in total privacy. Should she hear my grandmother coming from the hall, she could easily chuck her cigarette out the window through the hole and the fan would push the smoke out the window. She did this with the ashes and her exhausted butts as well. She told me she was quite proud of herself and her ingenuity and had gotten away with it for several weeks. One day she came home from school to find a brown paper bag on the front porch with her name on it. As she unfolded the bag, she discovered the accumulated cigarette butts from her weeks of smoking inside. It seems that Ruth prescribed to the "out of sight, out of mind" philosophy with her plan, tossing the cigarettes out the window so they couldn't be found in her room, but never bothering to go back and clean the piles of the butts from the ground outside her window. She laughs about it now, but I know she got in big trouble when she got inside. Mother Adams was a sharp cookie.
Once an adult, Ruth smoked regularly along with the rest of her brothers and sisters, but had put much more effort in getting started it seemed than the rest of them. The problem of the being the youngest of seven is that Mother Adams had pretty much seen it all already. Still, I think Ruth was pretty original, if only by necessity.
My mom's youngest sister is my aunt Ruth Ann who is possibly the funniest member of my family. I've written about her before. I remember the time she told me how much effort it took for her to START smoking...
Being the youngest of seven children and the "oops" baby, Ruth grew up around siblings who were much older. All of them were smokers and she longed to be "adult" like the rest of them. My grandmother, who did not smoke, tried her best to prevent her from following suit. Ruth told me how she tried smoking on three different occasions.
At the age of six, she had taken her older brother's cigarettes and hid behind his car. Being so young, she couldn't have realized that the rising smoke from her repeated drags on the cigarettes would float up and be visible from the other side of the car. Mother Adams, my grandmother, tanned her hide for that one, she said.
One evening, when she was 13 or so, she was getting ready for bed. Wearing pajama bottoms my mom had sewn for her, she tucked a single cigarette into the waistband and went to the bathroom to light up. Walking past my grandmother who was sitting on the phone, she made it to the bathroom and reached for the cigarette only to find it gone. Cursing that my mom had not put pockets in the PJ bottoms, she ripped them off and shook them up and down, praying that the cigarette would fall out to no avail. Thinking it fell out on her way to the bathroom, she put her PJ's back on and casually walked back out into the hallway, scanning the floor the missing fag (literal use of the word). Making her way back to her bedroom, she searched the carpet for the cigarette again and still never spotted it. Deciding to give it one last search, she made it back to the hallway, looking around the floor again very carefully but not suspiciously. Finally she looked up to see my grandmother, still talking on the phone, casually cradling the cigarette between her fingers as though she was enjoying it herself with a wicked smile on her face. I call this "round two" and Ruth lost on a TKO.
When she was sixteen, she finally had grown quite crafty and created the perfect solution to smoking. She had cut a small hole in the wire screen on her bedroom window. Positioning a fan on the other side of her, blowing toward the window, she could smoke in total privacy. Should she hear my grandmother coming from the hall, she could easily chuck her cigarette out the window through the hole and the fan would push the smoke out the window. She did this with the ashes and her exhausted butts as well. She told me she was quite proud of herself and her ingenuity and had gotten away with it for several weeks. One day she came home from school to find a brown paper bag on the front porch with her name on it. As she unfolded the bag, she discovered the accumulated cigarette butts from her weeks of smoking inside. It seems that Ruth prescribed to the "out of sight, out of mind" philosophy with her plan, tossing the cigarettes out the window so they couldn't be found in her room, but never bothering to go back and clean the piles of the butts from the ground outside her window. She laughs about it now, but I know she got in big trouble when she got inside. Mother Adams was a sharp cookie.
Once an adult, Ruth smoked regularly along with the rest of her brothers and sisters, but had put much more effort in getting started it seemed than the rest of them. The problem of the being the youngest of seven is that Mother Adams had pretty much seen it all already. Still, I think Ruth was pretty original, if only by necessity.
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