Born a Quaker with a committed Quaker mother and grandmother I always was aware of the evils of smoking. My grandmother lectured me each time I visited her. She told me many times-
"Thee will live a happier and healthier life, if Thee avoids tobacco."
My mother demonstrated the evil of smoking. Every year she brought a bowl of live fish to Quaker Meeting First Day School and rigged a smoke machine to blow into the water. By the end of class all the fish were floating upside down, dead. We children got the message.
My father was an Episcopalian. He smoked cigars, cigarettes and pipes filled with tobacco.. However, he encouraged me not to smoke and offered me a thousand dollars if I abstained from smoking until I was twenty-one. To demonstrate to himself he was not addicted to tobacco he abstained from smoking one month every year. My father always picked February -- the shortest month of the year.
My downfall came at the age of nineteen in 1954. I served in the United States Army when free cigarettes were given out by the military. I was soon smoking two packs a day.
After I was discharged I resumed my college education and fell in love with a young woman. She was a non smoker and let me know of her disapproval of my tobacco habit. I cut back to less than a pack a day. However, she still disapproved. I asked her if she would enter into a committed relationship with me? She said no -- not until I stopped smoking. My sweetheart added that she did not (and never would) enjoy kissing anyone who smoked.
So, that day was the last day I smoked a cigarette. I found kissing to be an equally pleasant addiction and within a year we married. Half a century later I have yet to smoke another cigarette, although kissing is no longer an addiction and I am no longer married.
"Thee will live a happier and healthier life, if Thee avoids tobacco."
My mother demonstrated the evil of smoking. Every year she brought a bowl of live fish to Quaker Meeting First Day School and rigged a smoke machine to blow into the water. By the end of class all the fish were floating upside down, dead. We children got the message.
My father was an Episcopalian. He smoked cigars, cigarettes and pipes filled with tobacco.. However, he encouraged me not to smoke and offered me a thousand dollars if I abstained from smoking until I was twenty-one. To demonstrate to himself he was not addicted to tobacco he abstained from smoking one month every year. My father always picked February -- the shortest month of the year.
My downfall came at the age of nineteen in 1954. I served in the United States Army when free cigarettes were given out by the military. I was soon smoking two packs a day.
After I was discharged I resumed my college education and fell in love with a young woman. She was a non smoker and let me know of her disapproval of my tobacco habit. I cut back to less than a pack a day. However, she still disapproved. I asked her if she would enter into a committed relationship with me? She said no -- not until I stopped smoking. My sweetheart added that she did not (and never would) enjoy kissing anyone who smoked.
So, that day was the last day I smoked a cigarette. I found kissing to be an equally pleasant addiction and within a year we married. Half a century later I have yet to smoke another cigarette, although kissing is no longer an addiction and I am no longer married.
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