Smoke, No Mirrors

            So, I was trying to decide what to do with my afternoon and then I had this brilliant idea to wrap some oak leaves in newspaper, stick them in my mouth and then set them on fire. Why would I do that? Plenty of intelligent people do the equivalent of this every day. They just call them cigarettes instead of leaf and paper torches.

            I know it’s cool to smoke. Who wouldn’t want to broadcast to the world that their head is flame retardant? And I really do understand what a satisfying activity it is. Not much beats the taste of that first drag on a Gauloises Blondes from the red box. Oooh I just love those (delicious French cigarettes for those who aren’t tobacco connoisseurs).

            At this point, it is impossible to deny the facts about how bad smoking is for our health. Lung cancer, emphysema, aneurysms, chronic bronchitis. Don’t forget the wrinkles and yellow teeth. If you still want to believe these things can’t happen to you, then I bring out the big guns. Smoking makes you smell! REALLY BAD! Your clothes, your hands, your breath. It’s worse than that guy at the gym who didn’t take a shower that morning and then also forgot to put on deodorant before hopping on that treadmill and running five miles. And you might not even notice how bad you smell because smoking has also destroyed the membranes in your nose. So, you walk around wondering why people are making such horrible faces at you. 
           Oooh, but my favorite gross fact: Your nose and sinuses produce 1-2 quarts of mucus every day (somewhere over a liter). In a healthy person there are tiny little hairs called cilia inside your nose and throat that help move the crap out of your nose and sinuses. If you smoke, sorry, your cilia are dead. (If you do stop smoking, they may grow back.) So where does that stuff go??? Nowhere. It just sits there, collecting in your nose and sinuses. Or you cough it up. And you wonder why you have so many headaches these days….

            I thought it might be helpful if I suggested some comparable activities that you could do in place of smoking.

1.     Chewing rusty nails

2.     Hitting yourself in the face with the bristle side of a hair brush

3.     Using your laptop in the bathtub

4.     Chasing skunks

5.     Putting shards of glass in your carpet – they’ll sparkle in the sunlight!

6.     Drinking Liquid Plumber

7.     Wiping your butt with sandpaper

8.     Napping in the sun with a magnifying glass on your face

9.     Using the oven in place of a hair dryer

10. Jumping rope with a live, downed electrical wire

“Those things are idiotic,” I hear you saying. This from the person with flaming vegetation hanging from their oral cavity. To the smokers in my life, I say with love, “Please get that shit out of your mouth.”