Cigarettes and Me

I don't remember when I first noticed smoking being around me, I can remember certain incidents when smoking was a part of the story but not that defining first moment. Both my parents smoked, but then again, so did a lot of people in the late seventies and early eighties, so it wasn't that unusual.

I grew up in a small beach side town of only 3000 people and my Dad was the local cop so everyone knew each other but definitely everyone knew me, and my family. I can remember going to the local supermarket at the age of 9 or 10 and buying cigarettes with the help of a note from my Mum, they thought nothing of it. For most of my life cigarettes have been around me but it still seems strange that it can become such an intricate part of who you are and be such an inclusive part of your existence, throughout my life, it's ups and downs, achievements and pitfalls, cigarettes have always been there to comfort and console. Even stranger, is that I find it so hard to be a part from this unusual hobby.

I am now 36 years old and have probably been smoking for almost 20 years, I started regularly around the age of 16, but had had several cigarettes before that.
A memory that stands out as possibly being one of my first involved two of my older cousins who somehow managed to get hold of a few cigarettes and talked me and my brother into joining them. Again this was at the house I spent some time growing up in, which also happened to be a part of the local police station and as such had a very outdated cell block in the very back of the yard with two extremely dated looking cells, supposedly as an emergency overnight holding cell. My brothers and I had many times before spent an afternoon in and around these cells, pretending to lock each other up, and also to try and make "the great escape", but on this occasion we would sneak down into the cell and share a cigarette or two. I remember a feeling of deception and a frightful feeling of getting caught but mostly I was just trying to impress the older relations.

From these cheeky and rather typical beginnings, my next recollections begin around the age of 12 or 13 as I entered high school and the opportunities became more widely available. Being the son of the local police man I think that I was trying to prove to others that I was just as capable as bending the rules as anyone.

A new friend had emerged in school and as it turned out he was a close neighbour as well, with a slightly new influence on me, I began to test the waters, and smoked a little now and then. As we lived in such a small town, it was normal to be out riding our bikes around town and particularly to the beach but on one occasion we decided to meet in the scrub at the back of the local golf course and make a small fire and tell some stories, and of course someone brought the cigarettes. I can remember buying a 20 pack of Peter Jacksons for $2.70.

After the fire and a few smokes my Dad came to pick me up and miraculously managed to find out that I'd been smoking. I though he was the greatest detective in the world but now I can see that the smell of smoking would have been an easy give away.

Around a year later, we moved to the city and at the age of 14 or so I bought a pack of cigarettes from a friend at school for two dollars, putting them in my backpack and taking them home, fate was against me that day and it happened to be this night that my mother decided to wash my bag. Predictably I was confronted with the questions of what I was doing, where I got the smokes and why I was smoking, it was also obvious that the cigarettes that were confiscated ended up on the top of the cupboard to be consumed at a later date by my parents.

Most of my extended family were also smokers including my grandparents, except for my Dads Dad. My maternal grandparents had a great collection of assorted ash trays and I remember driving with my grandfather in his old holden sedan with spectacular red vinyl trim on the inside as he smoked and cruised the streets of his small town. Even my Dads mother, who was the most dedicated catholic I have ever met, and with a beehive haircut that, in my childhood memory actually contained a small hive of honey producing bees, had a minor smoking habit, always pointing out that she only smoked a few each day.