Posted on 02/09/2007 6:33:28 AM PST by rellimpank
Some years ago, when I was freelancing at a mutual fund company, I took a break to go downstairs and smoke my pipe. On my way back upstairs, I found myself sharing the elevator with one of my co-workers in the corporate communications department.
"Ewww, smoke!" she exclaimed. "Let me out of here! I don't want you to give me cancer!"
Let's absorb this slowly. My fellow worker thought that: 1) Cancer was contagious. 2) She could "catch" cancer from the smell of tobacco smoke clinging to my clothes -- not from the smoke itself, which was long gone outdoors, but from the smell alone.
She was a dish, too. Pity.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Smokers stink, their breath stinks, their clothes stink, and they stink up the air around them wherever they are.
Always good to hear from you Eric!
Today, we seem to believe we have some Constitution right not to be offended by the smell of another person. Our ancestors would have thought we were completely insane. Life was a lot 'stinker' back in the "good old days", but probably much friendlier.
And yet, even when I've quit smoking for a period and can smell it - and I don't like it either - I'd still rather have a smoker around me than an anti-smoker.
Your operant conditioning is showimg.
Ah, an ex-smoker, the most insufferable type of anti-smoker.
Look, I can fully appreciate that you don't like the smell of cigarette smoke. Heck I'm a smoker (and sometimes non-smoker), and I don't like the smell of it either. I also don't care for the smell of B.O., coffee, and many perfumes and colognes. In fact, an too much of the latter, like in the perfume area of a department store, sets of my asthma (but cigarette smoke doesn't, strangely enough). But I wouldn't dream of making as ignorant of a comment in an elevator as the one in the story above, regardless of how much some smell bothered me.
Reminds me of what the poet Edgar Lee Masters said; "You don't need the state to impose tyranny when the (hysterical) mob will do it for you."
I forgot to mention that when smokers have their own special little smoking areas, they turn their own "havens of refuge" into stalls of unimaginable filth.
Concur. And, BTW, I'd feel pretty much the same about the young lady if she was awash in perfume.
Keep trying, someday you will win. Then you'll eventually get your true sense of smell and taste back as well as fell better everyday. I still shudder to think of how my days used to start, having to clear out the previous days intake, then starting it all over again. Good luck and health to you!
Very good point!
But you're forgetting about the benefits of smoking, like how it keeps petty little busybody control freaks at a nice comfortable distance.
:-)
I quit cold turkey in March of 1986. I had smoked red Winstons, then gold Winston Lights, then the white package Winston Ultra Lights. The Ultra Lights had so many perforations in the paper that I think I was smoking mostly air and thus increased the volume of packs per week. Smokes were $.50/pack back then. I added 2 or 3 inches to my gut but got rid of this in about a year. Food tasted so good after getting my taste buds back !
What if the "stink" because they eat a lot of curry or garlic, but are clean as a whistle and have never touched tobacco.
Are you still offended?
There's that conditioning.
Bottom line is that a legal activity is being drummed out through repetitive hysteria. Why is everyone, even conservatives who theoretically favor individual responsibility, so eager to scream at the new demon Tobacco?
Unless you sit in a small box with a chain smoker you or I are not going to get enough smoke to affect our health. Yes, you can choose to be offended at the smell. Congratulations, I guess - welcome to the ranks (pun intended) of the perpetually offended.
I'm far more tired of the people who are offended by cartoons, movies, drink, smoke, food, cars, dress, and the thousand other ways in which people choose not to behave exactly alike or in some scientifically-determined optimal life pattern than I am of people's poor choices.
Oh, and for your edification: I'm an ex-smoker, long since quit. I'm just the rare type, one who doesn't believe that once I've made a choice that therefore everyone else had better make the same choice.
You have nailed it on the head. Back a few years ago, I got into a minor disagreement with my vegetarian nephew. He was telling me how evil it was to eat meat. I explained one of the reasons he and so many of his generation have gone that way is because it's trendy and is an easy lifestyle in America. No problem going to the local supermarket and buying boca burgers and other easily prepared stuff. It's simple to live out these kinds of beliefs when one does not have to waste time on surviving like so many poor in this world that would be grateful to have any food, whether animal or vegetable. These newfound beliefs of so many are a product of a culture that has a lot of time on its hands.
Muzzies are the cause of Global Warming. Everybody knows that.
We must eliminate muzzies.
If you are a smoker - you can't smell it.
I smoked 2 packs of Kools a day for 20 years - I quit on the day of my massive heart attack (most people do not know that for every one smoker who dies of lung cancer or emphysema - 19 die from tobacco related heart attacks). It took me two years to be able to smell that smell that nonsmokers always talked about.
It doesn't smell like stale smoke - it smells like a broken sewer pipe. It is very nasty.
That smell can linger for years. Last spring I pulled a jacket out of the back of my closet. (I have not smoked for 9 years.) On my way to work I kept smelling smoke, I finally realized it was coming from the jacket. After eight years, it still reeked!
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