I'm just a few days shy of 66 and telling this story floods my soul with warm nostalgia. Way back when I was five, my moms and pops smoked non-filter Camels out of separate cartons they kept on top of the refrigerator. Pops was a real sport; always dressed to the nines with a Camel hanging from his lips....nothing in the world I wanted to be more than just like my pops. So, I began dragging a kitchen chair over to the fridge and swiping a pack from one of their cartons, alternating from one to the other to keep from getting caught. I had hollowed out a fort in a bulldozed pile of palmetto stumps and hid my cigs and matches there.
For nearly a year I witnessed some hellacious argument between my folks accusing each other of filching packs from their respective cartons. The second time the volunteer fire department had to come out and put out fires in the woods by the house, they discovered my stash and it wasn't hard for pops to figure out what was going on. First, he made me eat a whole pack of Camels at the dinner table....the results weren't pretty. Plan B was his buying me my own carton and ignoring my smoking, thinking my actions were an attention issue and I'd soon tire of it. He just didn't realize the "hero" issue.
Next year I started school and always had a pack and matches with me. I got caught numerous times and had to take notes home, but that only resulted in return notes that really teed off my teachers. Making things worse was Pop's Casbah; a teen soda fountain hang-out spot right on the edge of grammar school grounds. If you had a nickel, you could buy two Chesterfield Kings and a mini-book of matches and you were allowed to puff tough on the premises.
I carried cigarettes with me to school right through graduation. Eau Gallie Junior High School was pretty tough on us when caught, but by then I was a good and creative forger and they didn't investigate beyond the point where I handed their notes back the next day signed by "one of my folks." Those were the beginning of the really cool years for smoking. We'd dash out to a cleared patch of brush behind the school and light up. We didn't deceive ourselves we were unobserved. With the thick cloud of smoke that hung over that spot off and on all day it couldn't possibly be a secret. School authorities ignored us because we were away from the school grounds proper.
Melbourne High was a different story. Baseball was my thing and anyone caught smoking would be ruled ineligible for all extracurricular activities. I had smokes in my locker and my coaches knew I smoked, but I played by the rules on school grounds and during away games. I transferred to Leesburg High in my sophomore year and they couldn't have cared less. I rode a loud motorcycle, illegally parked my bike and car in the teachers' parking lot (you weren't allowed to drive to school until junior year), I wore levis, tee-shirts and engineer boots and it would only have been viewed as odd if I didn't smoke. I didn't know very many guys and gals in high school who didn't smoke....just about everyone in my crowd did.
Since back then I only once gave serious consideration to quitting cigs. In 2006, I and a co-worker friend (whom I recently talked into switching to
vaping) spent several hundred on an unsuccessful hypnosis gig. What a joke and I mean no disrespect to those who've undergone hypnosis successfully and quit. It's like my doctor(s) said all those years, "You'll quit when you really want to quit." Good luck on that because I've always thoroughly enjoyed smoking. That didn't change when my pops was diagnosed with terminal cancer in late November, 2010.
On December 12, 2010 I unplugged early from my career in Indiana and by the 21st I was in a house back home within an hour of him. From then until he passed on at age 90 on April 10, 2011, me and pops had the time of our lives; the most enjoyable 4-1/2 months over the whole course of my lifetime. During that entire period we shared non-filter Camels right up until a couple of hours before his death....he was tired and I hugged him and kissed him on the forehead before he went off to bed. He just went peacefully off to sleep and never reawakened. I miss pops very badly, but no sadness and grief here. He never did anything in his entire life that could tarnish the hero shine I still have for him and he went the way he wanted to on his own terms.
I continued smoking without much thought about it other than occasionally gazing at my lit cigarette wondering why I enjoyed them so damned much. In late November of last year I approached a lady I saw vaping and questioned her about it. She told me she'd been vaping for over a year, was now on flavor (wild cherry only), and had no trouble making the switch from analogs to PV. She told me she purchased her get-up online but there was an e-cig store at the local flea market that would allow me to try out different gear. The seed was planted in the back of my mind, and one weekend when I was about to drive by the flea market I stopped.
Nice people at the store; very knowledgeable and well-stocked with a variety of PVs, accessories, juices, etc. That was on January 6th last, when I tried the 24mg cartridge 510, loved it, and bought a 2-unit starter kit. Got home and naturally the wife had to weasel me out of one of them....both our batteries died simultaneously and I smoked a Camel while they were charging. The next day I bought the wife her own starter kit....she smoked her last analog after the first pull on the 510; I smoked another Camel four days later just out of curiosity and I haven't looked back.
My friends, I have found the PVs (we're on VECs and 510 tanks) to be far more satisfying than analogs and the only time I think about them is when someone asks how we're doing with the vaping. We regularly sit in a room surrounded by smokers and it never enters my mind....in fact, I like the smell of second hand smoke. People see us blowing huge vapor and are always asking us about the PVs. They seldom believe me when I tell them it's much more pleasurable and satisfying than cigarettes ever were. One qualification....I have an open pack of straight Camels and a Camel Zippo my pops gave me in my tool chest. On the 22nd, pops' birthday, I will fire one up and think about the times we shared, but no amount of cigarettes could ever replace my PV.
Thanks for sharing your stories and for your patience with this one.
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