Smoking kills

The Kent cigarette for sale at Duty Free has blunt bold letters of “smoking kills” on one side with a sentence on the other side: “Smoking can cause a slow and painful death.” The sale of tobacco is brisk if airport DFSs are to be the judge. At my house in Shenyang, along with the Kent, were a pack of black menthol and a regular Marlboro, and four Esse. I meant to throw them away.

I quit cold-turkey on cigarettes in ‘84 after more than a decade of indulging. My Dad died at 94, and my soon to be 96-year-old Mom lies at a hospice in Honolulu graciously resigned on the inevitable. My parents didn’t smoke but my Papa’s Mama rolled her own and lasted till she was 95. She grew Virginia leaves that grew as a cash crop in Ilokandia’s fields in my youth as my father’s relations smelled of pugon (dryer) all the time.

With my wife playing dutiful daughter in China, a go-fer for her sick parents living with her in Shenyang the last three months, expected to be with them for another six until a suitable institutional care can be arranged, she is not expected to join me and my household anytime soon, so I decided to smoke the Kent to while the time away.

My, we are really regressing here but it is just like getting back to pre-’84. I smoked a pack in two days, filling my lungs with 0.4 mg of nicotine, 5 mg of carbon monoxide, and 4 mg of tar, getting my throat dry as an overdone roast and my chest heavy navigating the walkway rails.

A friend suggested that I shift to Pedro Domecq’s brandy de Jerez, a Fundador, an unopened bottle leftover from a visitor in the kitchen cabinet. Find a smoke-free teetotaling GF who would swat my fingers before I flick a lighter. Duh.

One of the 2nd graders on the front row at a school I sub-taught kept looking at me and asked every five minutes why I had a lot of gray hairs. “Old man at 70” was insufficient explanation. He exhibited repetitive behavior.

I probably lost a year on the longevity count with the two packs I smoked. Doing so was with less pleasure than it once did. In fact, I probably contributed a handful of plastic fibers to the apartment’s water drainage as some missed the communal trash.

The big question is, with the big letters of warning screaming boldly at my face, why did I persist in reviving an old nasty habit? Shenjingbing (crazy) is a favored expression in China. I fitted the bill.

Autonomic behavior is often present at birth. Teachers deal with hyperactive children all the time, with incidences getting higher as we inject more chemicals into our system from as common as food preservatives. I have two kids diagnosed with ASD, autism spectrum disorder, whose behavior resembled the hypers in my classes. They were easy to spot ‘cause they stood up and did their own thing in their own universe when I asked for a three-to-five minutes of “listen” when I gave a context for the day’s activity.

My questioning 2nd grader with a prominent family name was relentless in calling attention to him self; he was evidently used to being the center of attraction. In the exercises, students asked to work together with a classmate, a practice encourage by teachers knowing that the best way to learn is to teach it to another. The problem was that the knowledgeable provided the answers and the unknowing copied, defeating the whole purpose of the exercise. The “me, me” syndrome reared its ugly head.

Which then led me to ask if I was also exhibiting the autonomic “me, me” behavior in wanting to recover the old pleasures of smoking. The Kent pack printed the warning boldly enough but I lighted up like “kill” was a dismissible matter.

We have many behaviors like this, manifestly disadvantageous to our welfare but we insist in doing it anyway. We label them as bad habits, or more neutrally, an addiction, as if Esse’s low nicotine would spare us the tar. Kent persists: SMOKING KILLS!

On Saipan, the importation of cocaine and methamphetamine is a lucrative business. We learned of ingenious attempts to spirit the substance into a market whose per capita consumption is on the top 10 of the nation’s survey.

The incidences of repetitive behaviors are high. We take for granted the chewing of betel nut with tobacco and powdered limestone thrown in. A sixth grader at SVES defended the habit as cultural. Aberrant behavior we call “illegal” violates the comfort of others. Though individual choice is a feature of democracy, consumption of illegal substances is a matter of personal choice. We see a number of adherents.

The Kent puffed well with the Fundador. I recall that when I ran into the ganja in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, I inhaled, too, Mr. Clinton! Virginia’s whiff did not alarm us so handing the stash to our smoking neighbor came easy but our fondness to a nightly three-finger of brandy shows two empty bottles. Acknowledging addiction, an AA 12-steps precondition, takes some doing. Pass the ice, please.