First I want to say… I guess I took a bit of a break for a while. The trick is to actually call it a break in the first place, rather than be left feeling like a loser-failure for not writing anything. An even bigger trick is to not feel supremely worse about it with each passing day. Everyone needs a break. Issokay. Sometimes you just don’t have any words for a while. I didn’t.
And for all my friends and peeps and tweeps who poked me and stuff… thank you. Really.
Thanks.
. . .
So a few weeks ago, I was carded while buying some cigarettes from the dépanneur. (Don’t be all Judgy McJudge, please.) This happens to me fairly often.
The first few times, (since I started smoking again in my 30′s – I know) as it happened in the moment, I felt as someone my age might – like a rockstar. I was completely flattered, even though I know that my short stature has almost everything to do with why he’s asking. He’s just glancing me over – I look small, therefore I must be a child. (Not with this potty-mouth…)
And maybe I don’t look like a smoker, if there even is such a thing. There’s nothing extreme about me. I don’t have a white beard and eyebrows streaked with dirty yellow around the mouth. I don’t have gnarled, nicotine-stained nails and fingers. With the exception of my yellowing teeth (and unless I’ve just blown in from outside) I might not seem like a smoker to you. People who didn’t know before often tell me they’re suprised that I smoke. They seem disappointed. (Unless of course, we’re outside smoking together because this person doesn’t usually smoke, which makes me disappointed jealous as hell that he or she would smoke like this at all when he/she didn’t have to, like I do.)
At the counter, I ask for my brand, speaking clearly, looking the man in the face when I’m speaking to him (it’s always a man who cards me) and wait for him to hand them over.
“Can I see some ID, please?”
I always let my mouth fall open into a mock-gasp, and I lean into the counter and purr a little bit while reaching into my wallet. “Rrrreeeeeally?! Well, you sweet thing…” I hand him my health card which has my date of birth on it. And to help him along with his mathematics, I’ll just tell him my age. Even to the half year. Or to the almost year.
He looks at me, and I can see he’s doing the math once more, because he always looks back to the card for more than a moment, making sure he’s reading the numbers right. He is right. He looks at me again and hands the card back. “You don’t look thirty-eight.”
“Why thank you, kind sir!!” I sing back to him, batting my eyelids, bouncing make-believe tresses of hair with the palm of my hand, all lady-like. I smile at him. Score: one for the rockstar.
He smiles back and hands me my smokes. “Matches?”
“Yes, please.” I refuse to buy a lighter because I’m in total denial about my smoking. (I should say, of my quitting. As in I’m not replacing that lighter because I’m quitting soon, and I don’t want this lighter hanging around reminding me all the time… far be it for me to just throw it away – that would we wasteful!! But I digress.) I’ve been accepting matches for close to a year.
This getting-carded-thing has been feeling way less awesome each time. The thing is, though I may not actually look my age, I absolutely do NOT look like I’m under eighteen. No way. Not even a little bit. It’s silly, really. Just look at my face for one minute, will you dude? I really don’t look like a minor. Seriously.
I mean, really.
The other thing is, when I’m standing there, I’m feeling like a loser for buying cigarettes. Again. Oh my god, MUST STOP this! And when the guy does ask me for ID, and I tell him my age, I’m embarrassed to say how old I am. And while this kind of scenario has occurred a few times a year for several years now, the age I state aloud gets older. And maybe the look he’s giving me is not one of, “Wow, she’s so youthful looking!” but more, one that says, “Wow! She should totally know better.”
Now, perhaps I’m just projecting here. I like to do that, sometimes. Playing the Devil’s Advocate and shit. I like to look all the scenarios… maybe he’s just flirting with me? Maybe he can’t do any math and is still confused? Maybe he’s alerting the police with a panic button underneath the counter, as I look exactly like one of the pawns in the fake-ID-racketing-ring in he lower-Westmount area… I nix all the scenarios I don’t like, and in the end the truth is this: I should know better. I totally DO know better. Every smoker does. Of course we do. Yes. We. Do.
So I stopped smoking.
And since I love lists so very much (they make me feel like I’m in control of things) here’s a short list of my reasons why:
1. I really can’t afford to toss $5 a day onto the trash (which is my body) because, um, hi! I don’t have an income. And besides, think of the shoes I could buy!
2. I’m sick of waking up tasting cigarettes in my mouth, even though I brush before bed.
3. They make me feel like a stupid person.
4. If I was to be diagnosed with a preventative form of something awful, I would feel like the stupidest person alive. And I wouldn’t forgive myself.
5. I feel self-conscious when I’m kissing. And I like to kiss people a lot.
6. I am a rockstar.
I won’t be that kind of ex-smoker, I promise.
G.G.
