Despite a good number of KU students, I don't smoke. I have no desire to. When someone asks me for a cigarette or offers me one, I decline and tell them the truth: "Nah man, I haven't smoked since I was in third grade."
That's right, I took my last puff of tightly-rolled smoldering leaves when I was eight years old.
So I suppose I need to preface this. In the evenings leading up to summer, my dad had begun smoking cigars out on our front porch. Being a curious child, I was intrigued by his ability to blow smoke rings and other stuff.
When I asked him why he smoked, he said because of the taste. Naturally, I asked him if I could try.
After pestering him several evenings in a row, he let me take one smoke. I took the cigar, sized it up, and tried to figure out how much to puff so the smoke entered my mouth but not my lungs, as my dad had suggested.
I puffed. It tasted gross. I had tried to just breathe in my mouth, but I was eight – Of course it got down my throat and into my lungs. I coughed and sputtered, and gave it back to him, feeling cultivated and astute. And that was that.
But then, a few weeks later, the next time I saw him smoking one, I asked if I could try it again. I remembered how it had tasted awful and had burned my throat, but it made me feel like a little man. My dad, probably getting a little worried that he might be creating a future dependent of Philip Morris, initially refused, but after my prodding, let me have one more puff.
But my dad is a wily one, and while I thought I was fast on my way to becoming an aficionado, he had other designs.
For Independence Day we went with our neighbors out to a quarry they own thirty or so miles out in the country. Since it was just the two of us families, no one would object to what my dad was about to do, especially after he explained himself to them. After loading my friend and me up with mild explosives, he told me, "William, instead of giving you a punk to light all these fireworks, I'm going to give you these two cigars. They'll work just as well. Just make sure you puff on them now and again to keep them lit."
Booya! My dad had just given me two full cigars! I felt like a little industrialist, smug with my Caribbean tobacco products as I celebrated our country's glorious birth.
And the firecrackers were lit. We shot black cats and sparklers and bottle rockets (no cops to bother you in the country), and my trusty cigars ignited each one. At one point my friend looked at me and said, "You know smoking is bad for you, right?" I just looked at him like the public service announcement zombie I knew he was and took another pull from the carcinogen tube.
Everything went fine and dandy for about the first hour. After that, I started getting a headache. Soon, it had progressed to light nausea. By the time we were driving home that evening, I couldn't look down at my Sega Game Gear without getting carsick. My dad hadn't said a word about the cigars. And he kept silent. Well, knowing my dad, he probably asked me if I wanted a couple more, holding back a grin. But he knew and I knew: I was sick of cigars.
So, like I said, I haven't inhaled, smoked or chewed since third grade. And frankly, that's the way I want to keep it. While I've obviously gotten over my aversion to tobacco, I figure there's no reason why I would want to start smoking now. I forgot what the cigar tasted like so I don't know what I'm missing. I'm perfectly content never having the stuff (or snuff) again.
So was my dad justified in giving me those cigars? Absolutely. It taught me a valuable lesson that I'll never forget, plus we both get a pretty funny story out of the deal. Is it the right approach for every parent? Probably not; I don't like speaking in behavioral absolutes. But I can't wait to pull something like that on my kid, because it's so much more than just a laugh.