I have some sympathy for you. You must feel that society is treating you as a second-class citizen. We make you indulge your addiction out-of-doors. It must be very uncomfortable during these very hot, humid days of the end of our semi-tropical summer. Especially on days like today when the thunderstorms come early. But when you stand right outside the entrance to the building and when you ride the elevator up to the floor to my office with me right after you have taken that last heavy drag, you fill my heavily scarred lungs with smoke that causes pain that I do my best to hide from you.
You may see me smiling, but if I thought it would help you quit smoking I would tell you that I wish you would not only stop trying to kill yourself but also stop trying to kill me.
Please stop smoking,
Is Still Here
I cannot personally speak to just how hard it is for anyone to quit smoking. I consider myself lucky to never have been tempted to start. My father was of the generation that did smoke, so I grew up around smoking but never found it pleasant to be around. It was just something you put up with.
A recent trip to a state that still allows smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants reminded me just how much the taste of good food is tainted by the odors that drift across the section boundaries. I remember with some horror the days of smoking and non-smoking sections on airplanes. As unbelievably bad as a seat just ahead of the smoking section was, a seat all the way at the front of the non-smoking section was hardly better if you were on a cross-continent flight. On the somewhat rare occasions I wrangled a seat in First Class, I came to learn that in that small section there was essentially no difference between smoking and non-smoking. A night on business trips when there were no non-smoking rooms left in the hotel I choose not to remember. Having to sit in all day conference meetings with smokers also qualifies as a memory I try to keep stuck far back in the darkest caves of my mind
So now that open reporting by the medical community has gotten past the tobacco industry and we know that smoking is really bad for you (as was known in Germany in the 1920s but we in the US could not accept because that was the “wrong” side of the war so we had to wait for the 1950s and 1960s to relearn it for ourselves) and have put in place laws to protect non-smokers, smokers for the most part must partake of their addiction in purgatory. We non-smokers still must often run their gauntlet at the entrances of buildings. Do we rebel or try to keep the peace? Usually, in what is somewhat rare behavior for me, I try to keep the peace. But catch me in the wrong mood or when my lungs are struggling more than usual and I may blurt out what I am thinking. It has happened occasionally. At least one of Still Here Too’s old friends barely speaks to me because of one of these outbursts. I just hope I never allow an outburst when the target is a stranger who is 6’4”, 240 pounds of redneck muscle with a temper as bad as mine 
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Is Still Here
