[GT40FIED]

People's reactions to smoking never cease to amuse me. Everybody has horror stories about loved ones who smoke or have smoked...but you never hear the subject of the stories telling you to quit. Not one peron with a tracheotomy has ever come up to me and told me it was bad for me. Why? Because they get it. They understand what I'm doing. It's always their son/daughter/niece/nephew/third cousin's best friend pestering me with fake concern...like some sort of forced attrition.

And let's please not pretend that smoking is any more dangerous than breathing. All of the health risks associated with smoking also happen to a fair number of people who don't smoke. Lung cancer happens in a large cross section of smokers AND non smokers. Same goes for heart disease and emphysema. Smoking might increase those risks...then again it might not. A friend of my parents died from lung cancer despite the fact that she never touched a cigarette nor had she ever had any significant contact with second hand smoke. She was a nun for god's sake (I don't mean that figuratively...she lived in a convent). In contrast, my great grandfather smoked cigarettes AND cigars, drank too much, womanized, dumped salt on EVERYTHING and ate the fat off of steaks. He lived into his 90s, old enough so that he actually forgot that he smoked.

My point is thus...the older man who passed me on campus wasn't anywhere near close enough to catch more than a passing whif of my smoke. I wasn't harming him...hell, I didn't even look at him until he spoke. Yet in his infinite wisdom he decided to (I suspect knowingly) throw out his 2 cents just to piss me off. If I had money to spare, I would have dropped to my knees, thanking him for his wisdom then proceeded to crumple up the pack and throw it away before rushing over and tackling him full-force with a hug and thanking him for saving my life. Man...that would've fucked with his day. I'm not saying you have to like that fact that people smoke. Just don't act like you know any better than we do. Some day, if I get my wish, someone will tell me that smoking will kill me just seconds before crossing the street and getting hit by a bus. Holy shit...that would rule so hard.

Oh...and one other thing...the analogy to fat people has nothing to do with health risks. Well...sort of, but not really. My point is that although what they're doing to themselves is just as bad (in some cases worse) as what I'm doing, it's socially acceptable to hassle smokers. If you walked up to some land whale at McDonalds and told them while they were scarfing down some cheeseburger "hey...that's gonna kill ya" people would look at you like some kind of monster. Double standards are bullshit.