To steam or to smoke, that is the question

When you see a trendy person embracing the new steamer equivalent of smoking, the reaction might be to groan. It is with me. However, the groan comes with some empathy.
I’ve not vaped/viped and thankfully never really felt tempted. However, I can’t deny that I smoked, from teens all the way through to near the raw forties.

It’s become fashionable to link the two. And there are suggestion that vaping might help break the habitual smoking habit.
Both offer the user a dragonish look, but otherwise it seems rather like comparing chalk and cheese.
Smoking was special, very special, and why? It gave you the chance to resemble the stars of the silver screen, and if anyone could smoke in a cool way, they certainly did.

The art of cool

Back in the days when the big screen was king, when there weren’t really alternative screens, the stars were the masters – and mistresses – of the art of cool.
And we copied them, and close friends did too, and for a few minutes every so often we matched the celluloid sophistication.
Perhaps also it’s like the young human need to dress alike, the necessity to feel we’re being seen as one of the in-crowd.
And in my case, there was family influence, too. In childhood, my parents often took up the habit for a while.
My live-in grandmother was a faithful smoker, and I doubt ever dreamed of abandoning the desire.
From about three years, I would go almost daily to a shop on the nearby Triangle to replenish her supply of Kensitas. Doubtlessly that and the amount of cigarette smoke drifting about the home made taking up the habit easy. That plus the desperate desire of the young to be seen as ‘grown up’.

The challenge of the drawback

Among the peer group in early teens, smoking seemed to earn a higher standing than letting on that you’d done it with a girl.
Of course, accomplishing smoking’s piece de resistance, the drawback, took some concentration and determination.

I persisted and soon could show off nicotine stains and even flourish the movie stars’ gestures that divided the pro from the amateur…. Continues on the blogs for my ocean travel book, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com