I played a joke on a guy I was dating when I was in college. I knew his younger brother and met him when he was visiting. So we started to date on weekends, and one time I decided to play a joke on him. I did not smoke. His brother was to offer me a cigarette, and I would take it and act like I had taken up smoking. He fell for the prank and then we let him in on the joke. So also for a joke, he sent me a pretty matching lighter and cigarette case for Valentine's Day. Well, I couldn't let them sit there unused, so I started smoking. What a dunce! And I was asthmatic too. When I married my husband about 4 years later, I "quit" smoking, but bummed cigarettes from my sister when she would visit for a few years after that. I don't think I was addicted; I just liked something to fiddle with when people were sitting around chatting.

Thank God I never ever did and never ever will. I ate second hand smoke for a large portion of my life however and it has made it's mark with my respiratory problems and asthma. My father was a very heavy smoker and smoked constantly in the house around us and even though it affected me in a very negative way it never stopped. I married a heavy smoker and put up with it for many years. Till one day after I had been very sick with more respiratory problems and severe asthma, taking medications for it, I said enough is enough. I am not going to continue to eat your smoke and have it kill me. If he was going to smoke it would not be around me. He had to go outside to smoke no more smoking allowed in the house, all ashtrays were moved to the porch and patio. He was not happy but he knew how sick it made me so he agreed. One very cold winter in our Oklahoma house he got very sick from going out in the cold to smoke and the smoke contributed, he had a bad respiratory infection. He was in bed for 2 weeks, it probably was pneumonia if truth be told. So I threw away all the cigarettes because during that 2 week period he was not able to smoke. That meant he had gone through the withdrawal period too. He was not happy. We went to the doctor for help and he got on the patch. He did finally manage to quit but it was very difficult and I still from time to time catch him with a cigarette. I have a very strong feeling during this stressful time he has succumbed and smoked a few. The workers here smoke outside. He has copd. I keep begging him to please not do it, his response is that he is not doing it. I really hope and pray he isn't he says I smell smoke because of the workers. I hate cigarette smoke it just sends me right into an asthma attack.

My dad had his shortcomings, (rather anti-social except for work, and an alcoholic,) but considering his difficult childhood I was amazed to know he never once picked up a cigarette, even though everyone else was doing it. (This included my mom who quit for lent one year--before kids--and never went back when he sarcastically asked her when she was going to start again. This ticked her off and she told him she'd start when she was ready. Smart Dad.) I always admired him for this and emulated him, happily. Frankly, I never could understand how someone could start as I found the smoke so disgusting.

Fast forward to dating my now-dh who is from India, where most all men smoked back in his day. He tried to quit several times and it was AWFUL to experience with him because he was such a crab. The girls' pediatrician made a comment once about Daddy quitting the smoking habit, which they and/or I passed on with a bit of a smirk. I think that's what finally did it, though it was a tough, tough slog. He has picked up a cigarette once in awhile "in secret," but I always know because he gets testy. I'd say it's been almost 10 years since the last episode and I'm hoping he's done. He was not a heavy smoker--less than a half a pack a day--but it was hell to quit.

i started smoking because my role model at the time -- 1961 -- was Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's and she smoked. Quit when i was pregnant, but picked it up again. Finally quit when i have bronchitis and couldn't smoke for a week. Didn't see any point in starting again.

My mother smoked. I doubt that I would have had as many respiratory problems as a child if all the adults around me had not smoked. When I was about six I was imprisoned between my grandmother and my aunt in the back of my grandfather's Cadillac, driving from Tucson to Denver. My grandfather and father were in front, smoking cigars. (Makes me short of breath to *think* about it!)

I should have said, I didn't start smoking until I started working, and I never smoked more than four or five cigarettes a day. (I was still addicted, much to my surprise. And I am now asthmatic/COPD.)

Oh Susan, you are so funny. Yes, you are a CLEVER girl! Love the photo. You look so cool and sophisticated, like one of ads for Virginia Slims. Remember those?

I tried a cigarette once as a teen and thought it was awful, never tried it again. Except, like Raven, I did smoke the first 20 years in my life, any time I was around my parents, especially in the car.

I changed beauticians a few years ago because while my hair was busy taking on color, she would go outside for a cig and come back in a cloud of scent. Ugh.

I don't care if people smoke, just not around me, but what does make me angry is seeing cigarette butts on the ground.

I'm not really sure why I started. I could say it was because my friends did or because my dad did but he died (motorcycle accident) a few years before I started. Mom smoked occasionally and was probably smoking when I started. I may have even smoked instead of eating (early 20's). Boyfriends and then hubby smoked as well but I don't smoke anymore and that feels real good.

My girlfriend and I were the only kids in our group who never had a cigarette. At our slumber parties, they'd all light up and make fun of us squares. One remarked that guys didn't like girls who didn't smoke. She recently had a lung removed from cancer. I've always been a health nut. Later at our reunions, I noticed that all looked much older than we did. In my family, all the men smoked like my father , who died of lung cancer, and some of the women, not my mother. My husband smoked as a teen, and today i would never have even gone out with him. However, when our daughter was three, she asked him to stop and he did. Cold turkey and never had one since. PA just raised the tax one dollar a pack on cigs and that brings it to a gazillion dollars a pack. When my husband smoked it was 25 cents and you got 4 pennies back in the vending machine.

I did not pick up the habit because my dad was a very heavy smoker. I grew up in a cloud of blue smoke & hated it. He could not even finish his breakfast before he had to start chain smoking at the table. He had an ash tray on the kitchen table & dining room table. He always had a cigarette in his hand. My brothers do not smoke either. I was the only one in my "group" of friends in high school that did not smoke. I did not think that made me a square, I thought I was the coolest one of the "group" a real rebel-LOL!!

I have only witnessed the devastation of the nasty habit. I never tried to smoke - not even once as a kid. Nor has my husband ever smoked.

Hubby's brother-in-law (64-years old) died recently from lung cancer, and what a sad ending. He finally got to retirement age (62) and moved to their dream winter home in the south so he could play golf everyday. Shortly after moving there he caught their home on fire with a cigarette and burned it down, and soon after that he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He continued to smoke until he went into a coma at the end.

My parents and my two brothers smoked at home, and I'm sure second hand smoke is why I have lung issues to this day, just as my sister does (and neither of us ever smoked). I never allowed anyone to smoke in our home. My in-laws also smoked, and family gatherings in their small 850 sq. ft. home meant there were at least 5 people around who smoked out of the large family. As a child, our daughter remembers hiding in the farthest place away from the smokers because it caused her breathing problems. She would even hide in the car and read a book to get away from it. But smokers don't ever care what effect it has on others, nor all the damage and litter they produce.

It's a bitter issue with me. How awful we must have smelled as children, and through no fault of our own. The wasted money, when we had so many basic needs that money they burned-up could have provided for; and devastating health issues related to smoking my parents went through later in life, and I was their caretaker. I would get their groceries for them, but would never buy them cigarettes -- they had to figure out how to do that themselves. Congestive heart failure from smoking killed my mother at age 73 (she looked like she was 93); and it's amazing how the nurses would sneak cigarettes to my father when he lived in the nursing home - until they killed him. Shame on them.....

Nope, I just never saw the up-side of smoking. There wasn't anything "cool" about it that I ever saw....

I never smoked but both my parents did. Second hand smoke I think is why I got lung cancer. I was lucky they found it early & only had to remove 1/3 of my right lung. My husband was a smoker but gave it up for me, sure love this man

I grew up during a time when smoking was something most people did. I remember running up to the corner drugstore to pick up a pack of cigarettes for my mother when I was still a preschooler. My parents were both smokers. Most teachers and doctors were smokers also. I started smoking at age 12. It's wasn't hard to get hooked since I'd been breathing smoke my entire life. Yes I probably started to be "cool".

By the time I was in my early 20s I wanted to quit. Hated the morning cough and the night time cough. hated being a slave to cigarettes. Tried and failed several times. I finally quit cold turkey on the day I gave birth to my DD 40 years ago. I was determined not to bring my children up in a smoking household. I was up to almost 3 packs a day by then. DH had quit a couple months prior. We became a smoke free household. Parents weren't happy about that. LOL But they adjusted. Now I can't stand to be around smokers.

It was the cool thing to do back then............... then your hooked!

I started AND stopped when I was 12. A neighbor and I decided to smoke, but we didn't have any idea which brand we should try, so we decided to try them all! This was back in the days (49 years ago) when cigarettes were easier to access at a checkstand. One of us would stand in line and the other would reach over the back of the checkstand unbeknownst to the checker and grab a few packs. I'm so ashamed when I think of it. We eventually netted about 20 different types, took them to her garage and divvied them up. I got sick every time I lit one up, but I tried so hard. I got sick to my stomach and had diarrhea before I was even done with a cigarette. It was very easy for me to quit, LOL.

I don't smoke, but in my late teens I tried it about five times.

Years later when talking with my OH about smoking and how glad I was that I never liked it, he asked me why I had tried it. Er... I had to really think about that.

He himself had never tried it. Had no inclination of trying it. I really admired that in him. He could turn his back and a blind eye and the other cheek.

I was never cool and I never smoked cigarettes.

I never smoked and neither of my brothers did either and I think it's because both of my parents were heavy smokers. We would all be seated at the dinner table and my parents would smoke throughout the meal. The three of us would sit there with an ashtray on the table next to the salad or spaghetti.

My brother used to tease my Mom and tell her that when she died he was going to cremate her and have her ashes embedded in a crystal ashtray.

Both my parents smoked when I was young and it was torture to be in the car with them, especially in the winter. My brother and I would roll down the windows and hang our heads out!! Neither of us ever smoked.

It's odd, neither one of my parents smoked, but, all three kids did. I remember being in the hayloft of my grandfather's barn with my cousins. I was probably about 7, they were older. He caught them, he was livid. Not about the smoking, about the danger to the hay and barn! I started at 14, we had smoking patios at school. Socializing. Sad.

My story is similar to many here. Both parents were heavy smokers, and I was so put off by it that I have never even tried smoking, and I hate being around smokers. One vivid childhood memory is of the times after dinner when I would be delegated to take out the kitchen garbage, and my Dad would stop me on the way out to dump out his filthy ashtray on top of the garbage, often wet lettuce leaves. The sight and smell nearly made me throw up. To this day my skin crawls if I have to clean an ashtray (I'm 55).

Mom smoked in the car and this just exacerbated the car sickness I had from infancy. I would wind down the window a little and sit with my nose in the fresh air while Mom berated me for "putting it on just to annoy her".

Luckily my DH has never smoked and we've raised a smoke free daughter. MIL was a smoker when we met but quit not long after DH and I started dating- no idea why but it's been about 35 years now. FIL died unexpectedly a couple of years ago from too-late diagnosed lung cancer; I've often wondered if the secondhand smoke was a contributing factor. He was a journalist and I imagine he was exposed a lot in the workplace as well.

I have to think that smokers have no idea how bad they smell. I've had customers at places where I worked you could smell from ten feet away, or over the smell of a functioning espresso machine. Yuk.

My dad was a very heavy smoker and sadly, he paid for it by having a fatal heart attack at 55. My mother never smoked and none of us (5) kids did either. Any time I have to have a test of some sort where they ask if I have ever smoked and I tell them no they say " I surmised that!"

I smoked about a pack of cigarettes when I was 14, because a 'friend' encouraged me. But my two best friends (one is still a best friend) were shocked, so I didn't pursue it. I don't think my parents ever suspected, because like murraysmom, I was the kid with my nose out the window in my grandparents' car. Both grandparents smoked, and my grandfather was smoking three packs a day when he had his first heart attack. He quit, but my grandmother continued to smoke until long after he passed away, when she developed chronic bronchitis. They both had COPD, SOB and had to rely on supplemental oxygen in their last years.

Neither parent smokes, although my father has always used chewing tobacco. Disgusting. My dear MIL smoked, and died much too soon from lung cancer. I think her smoking also contributed to my late husband's asthma, which made him more susceptible to a deep tissue lung infection, the inflammation from which contributed to his eventually having a fatal heart attack at the age of 53.

This reminds me of a story my FIL, who always joined my MIL in claiming that cigarettes weren't 'that harmful', told about a visit to a cardiologist.

Doctor, "Mr.G., how long have you been a smoker?"

FIL, proudly, "Doctor, I've never smoked a cigarette in my whole life."

Doctor, "Mr.G., how long have you lived with a smoker?"

After that conversation, he stopped defending smoking.

I do not like smoking whatso ever and disgusts me, really turns me off seeing over the years cigarrettes hanging out of womens mouths and ashes upteem long. Flicking ash everywhere and anywhere ugh. And hated that they took the best seats in restaurants and the heavy smoke we had to breath in when going out for a meal or anywhere. And hate that people smoke in cars as no one can get away from the smoke. And smokers who start fires in our precious forests and they take off the fires from hikers that smoke,etc. and they do not I noticed stomp out their butt. And seeing their ugly butts are awful and shouldn't be. Really irked me something else seeing them drive up somewhere and out would come the dumping of the butts in their car.

I did have realatives that smoked, my dad's parents both smoked and due to my grandfather's smoking I almost burnt our house down when I was a kid. He would come to vist and started letting me blow out the match, well my parents were out and I found a box of matches and lit one by one and blowing them out but one didn't stay out and started on fire in full parents wastebasket in bedroom and I was running back and forth with glass from bathroom putting it out. My dad found out and told him no more doing that. He was told by doctor to quit smoking and he did but my grandmother smoked and didn't like he didn't and so she pushed him back into smoking. She was a dangerous smoking as when she came she smoked in my bed and I found burnt holes in my bedspread from her ashes.

My mother's cousin and aunt and uncle were all heavy smokers, didn't know my great uncle but knew my great aunt but she passed away of cancer. And mother cousin chain smoker, she couldn't quit and got cancer of the throat and it was bad, that whole family passed of cancer to smoking.

I did remember my dad smoking when I was really young but thankfully he gave it up. My mother took it up when she was a nurse in training and hated it and quit.

I had no desire to smoke and didn't think it cool though it and person disgusting.

And the smoke smell that hung on everyone and house and cars and hair.

My dad said you can tell smokers due to the heavy perfume too heavy put on to hide it but can't fool anyone he said.

I see that it goes up and down, will not see anyone smoking and driving and then suddenly that is all I see is those cigarettes hanging out of women's mouths.

Also the high school kids too.

I was never so happy when we non smokers won the non smoking in restaurants,etc. No more smoke filled places and breathing in that horrible stuff.

I remember at the cancer clinic when volunteering there as a teen and they would go and have their treatments and throwing up and so sick and begging for cigarettes and no one was allowed to give them any, don't worry as I sure wouldn't have.

And now so many that started smoking young want to quit and spending a huge fortune on cigarrettes and they can't quit so many no matter what they have tried too.

Its a bad habit like so much is.

I don't smoke but I had a friend who smoked in high school and would sometimes smoke with her. Cloves were the in thing when I was in high school. I think back now to about 30 yrs ago and can't believe in the billing office I worked at that smoking was allowed inside the building at the desks...that is just crazy.

Having skipped first and second grade I was always two years younger than my peers. So I started way to young at 8. So I smoked for over 50 years. A pack a day was my limit. I quit 5 years ago. Now I'm paying for it all.

Never, never, not even an inkling to try it. Watching Mad Men and other series like that, it makes my skin crawl seeing all of that smoking.

You will not believe this but when we were kids we smoked out in the corn field ..... dried corn silk wrapped in newspaper! Yuk! Who knows why kids do such stupid things? We went on to cigarettes but I stopped cold turkey in the seventies. It was then I realized how much my husband was smoking. He died of cancer.

I grew up in the 1950-60's and everyone smoked or so it seemed. I tried but it never caught on. Once when I was 14 and a cigarette got passed around. Then a few years later when I went to a drive-in move with a girlfriend. We smoked a whole pack of a menthol ones. I got so sick I never wanted to smoke cigarettes again. I think I did try Swisher Sweets cigars at a party in college. Nasty!

I grew up on second hand smoke from my parents and a lot of my relatives. My dad only smoked cigars and pipes, which he said was not as bad as cigarettes. For as far back as I can remember I would buy him Dutch Masters cigars as a Fathers Day present. He quit when I was 10 because I think a friend got lung cancer and it scared him.

He worked on my mom to quit after that and she finnally did when I was 25. It was the day of my wedding and she ran out of cigarettes and couldn't get to the store. She decided that would be her last day and when I celebrated my anniversary, she celebrated hers. She had started smoking at 14 because she thought it made her look so gown up. She smoked till she was 59 and lived to be 93. Maybe quitting helped.

I have only one brother who smokes, out of us 5 kids. He tries to quit but always goes back. He is 69 and has all kinds of problems. He is an alcoholic who burned down his house when he passed out with a lit cigarette. He is lucky to be alive. He escaped with only burns to a hand and arm.

My sister use to smoke Cloves when they were popular in 1970's. They smelled nice but I never wanted to try them after my earlier experience. She gave them up when she went to a healthier life style.

DF smoked but quit in midlife and DM never smoked. I have never smoked and DH smoked, but quit when DS was little. Fewer and fewer people in our circle of family and friends are smokers, thank heaven. With the new awareness of the harmful effects of second hand smoke, one sister who visits us regularly insists on smoking outdoors. I enjoy watching old movies on TCM channel and I am struck by how many of the characters smoke. I wonder if this was a form of product placement and many smokers were moved to emulate their favorite "cool" stars in starting the habit. Sometimes the movie smoking didn't exactly appear glamorous, though, such as the time that Humphrey Bogart was having a fistfight with a villain, all the while gripping a cigarette in his mouth.

Frank Sinatra often sang with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth

I'm happy that so many here at the KT have never smoked, or beat the addiction early (or late). Tobacco use isn't 'a habit'. It's an addiction.

Realizing I was 'an addict' shocked me, but it also worked to reinforce my decision to quit. Because I had smoked so lightly, I really had no idea I was addicted. (Hint: If you are searching the ashtrays at the end of a party you've given, looking for a still-viable cigarette, you are addicted.)

I've only ever smoked just a hand full of times but when I did, I guess it was because I thought it was cool, I was a kid. I never liked the taste though, so it wasn't addicting to me.

Dad smoked a pipe, and cigars occasionally: one of my memories is of the cigar smoke in the car when we'd be going to town on a rainy day. During World War II, his friend in a watch repair shop in the city would comment that he wasn't smoking his cigar, Dad said he couldn't get tobacco, so the guy would get him some cigars or tobacco occasionally. Dad said cigarettes were "two puffs and a spit" ... and wouldn't let the hired men smoke in the barn. He used quite a lot of chewing tobacco, later snuff, as he never smoked when working on the farm.

Mom was out of my life from when I was just under six, taken to mental hospital when youngest brother was about 6 mos. old, but I think she didn't smoke.

I used to give Dad the devil for his smoking.

He had breathing problems, visited the prairies for a bout 6 weeks one fall, leaving the farm for me to look after care at age 15, along with my two younger brothers. He was partly visiting relatives and friends and he worked for a couple of weeks in harvest. After he came home to the London area that fall, in the following spring, sold his cattle and other animals, plus most of his farming equipment and rented the farm out, planning to move out west to farm. I worked for the renter, my brothers and grandma, who'd come to live with us after Grandpa died, and who never smoked, but I think Grandpa may have, were farmed out to church friends.

Dad had some things to do in the prairies through that summer, and came back to spend the winter in Ontario prior to moving out there, the following spring, when he'd arranged to sharecrop a farm. My Grandpa had helped that man and his brother, neighbours living within 5 miles of where I do now, get an education, almost 40 years before, and who had gone out there about 1910 and returned for a visit in 1924, telling of the great opportunities out there ... but Dad and Mom were engaged, married in 1925, and she had a brother out there who was trying to farm where it was too dry, so she wanted no part of going out there.

Some friends and I picked up ciggie butts along the roadside, bought some rolling papers and tried smoking. I began buying some in packs, later.

When I wrote to Dad, this new adventure was part of the news imparted.

In his reply, he said, "Well! well!! well!!! (1) So the young man who's been giving the old man the devil for all of these years is doing fine, is he?"

1. There was one underline under the first "we'', two under the second, and three under the third!

That was all that I ever heard from Dad about the smoking.

So ... I think that it had something to do with declaring my independence, of choosing to live my life as I chose, and being out from under Dad's thumb, though it was not a demanding thumb.

I was age 10 when World War II started and soon the farmhands went off to war, so what Dad and this 10-year-old (and growing) and a couple of younger brothers got done - got done, for the next five years ... and the rest didn't, so I'd learned about hard work from an early age, and responsibility when Dad had left operating the farm in my tender care for the six weeks in the previous fall.

After about six months, including some time after Dad's return from the west, but with no input from him ... I decided that I didn't like the taste ... and having been trained to be frugal, the cost ...

... so I quit.

Never took it up after.

My ex- smoked, though that would have been a "No! no" when we were missionaries in Korea (4 years, for her) so she didn't smoke then, but began again following our return to Canada. I think that she continued through her later years, but she'd been employed as second to head, later head, of food service in a substantial hospital, so I'm almost certain that she couldn't smoke on the job. Will have to ask son about that.

Ironically, she, who'd fed millions ... died of colon cancer, 12 years ago this month. At age 66, and when the young ones said that, in the ordinary course of things, she'd have retired the year before, I added, "and have been sick through most of that year". She'd taken early retirement, so had 10 years or so to enjoy her retirement.

We never know at least a major portion of what tomorrow may bring.

Son smokes - I'm fairly sure that daughter, who's spent most of the last 20 years in Phoenix, doesn't.

Hard to believe that they're both over 50.

Hope you're enjoying your (probably smoke-free) day.

ole joyful

As a teen my girlfriends and I would smoke at slumber parties. My then boyfriend, later to be husband, smoked when I met him which was in 1962 and not uncommon. I started smoking with him in 1964. In the beginning I didn't smoke a lot and insisted that I could quit anytime but never tried. I continued to smoke through the births and deliveries of 3 children.....in the hospital room after the births, with the baby rooming in!! By the last one in 1973 it was suggested by the nurses that it wasn't a good idea. Through the years I would try to stop (in a very feeble manner) but was never successful. In 2003 my husband died from lung cancer, after our most successful quit. I backslid a bit after that but less than half a pack a day from my highest count ever which was a bit more than a pack a day. In 2007 I had an AVM which is similar to a brain aneurysm and was in ICU for a month then hospitalized for the most part of the next 4 months. This was a drastic way to do it but I quit. Out of curiosity, I had a puff of one about 2 years ago and it was the absolutely grossest thing on earth! It was all I could do to keep from throwing up. The smell from others smoking is disgusting and I have apologized to everyone I know for having subjected them to my smoke all those years. Especially to my poor children who were held captive for 12 hour car trips for vacations.......

I started smoking when I was 17 in 1992 on the last day of my junior year of high school. Nearly all of my friends smoked and we still had a smoking section outside and the teachers were allowed to smoke in their cafeteria. My dad was a heavy smoker and quit cold turkey in 1994 after his first heart attack. My mom never smoked. When I was growing up it seemed like smoking was everywhere. I've quit so many times I can't even count. I wanted 2016 to be the year to quit but I had a bunch of stressors that completely ruined that idea. Most likely I'm going to try the patch again. They're free from my work so I might as well take advantage.