It’s Official: We OD’d on the Internet
Zooming is to real conversation as smoking is to breathing
When I was in high school, I was in a play where I got to smoke cigarettes. I say “got to” because back then I was something of a nerd (before nerds were cool) and loved the idea of jocks and other popular kids spying the foil lining of my artfully positioned Marlboro softpack sticking out of my jeans jacket pocket.
I hadn’t quite mastered a natural grip, and couldn’t take more than a few puffs without getting dizzy, so I‘d “practice” smoking after school in the parking lot behind the convenience store, where the kids who I wanted to see me smoking happened to hang out.
When I got home one evening after “rehearsal,” my father happened to notice the pack I was basically advertising from my jacket. He didn’t yell at me. He just said “let’s talk after dinner. On the back porch. Bring the cigarettes.”
When we got out there, he asked me to smoke one. The whole thing. And then another. “You wanna smoke? Then smoke,” he said. “Smoke ’em all.” By halfway through the third cigarette, I was green and ready to puke. My mom made him stop, threw out the cigarettes, and the nightmare was over. But I’ll never forget just how sick I felt back then — and how little I’ve wanted to smoke cigarettes since.
