Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Smoking

I can't believe I was a 3 pack-a-day smoker and I smoked for 19 years before I quit at age 33 (do the math). There's really nothing worse than a former smoker. After years of polluting the air and not giving a rat's ass about the smell or the smoke, now all of the sudden we make a scene, with lots of loud comments and waving of hands to push away the smoke.

Myke and I were best friends in high school. Both of our dads worked for DuPont and we were unfortunately forced to relocate to a God-awful redneck town in the mountains of western North Carolina. There is nothing worse than being 16 years old and moving in the middle of the school year let alone to an area out in the middle of nowhere. I met her in the smoking area at school. Yes, where I went to high school, we had a smoking area. There was one for the boys, one for the girls. We had a lot of classes together and spent a lot of time in the smoking area.

When Wally announced his 2011 tour would be riding the Blue Ridge Parkway, it seemed a good opportunity to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Ride my bike and visit some old (no pun intended) friends.

I haven't seen her in 31 years so I was really looking forward to the visit. She and her husband have a beautiful home they built themselves on 15 acres of land on the side of a mountain very close to the DuPont forest. To get to their house it's a single lane gravel driveway that's about a mile in distance. I knew ahead of time she still smoked so I made sure all my clothes were in plastic bags. But I really had no idea what the impact would be. When you walked into her house, the stench of smoke was enough to knock you down. I'm certain I inhaled at least a pack of cigarettes during my 2 night stay. She lit one after another. It was like looking at my former self.

But the real damage, well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

No comments:

Post a Comment