The First Time
My parents don’t smoke, my sister does smoke, but I don’t smoke… anymore.
I grew up in the 80s in the midst of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” Campaign and I was very adamant about just saying no to drinking, smoking, and doing any type of drug… until I reached puberty.
At the tender age of 13, I drank my first wine cooler (it was peach, if I remember right) and in the coming years I would drink many, many wine coolers and though I steered clear of beer (it tasted nasty), Jack Daniels and Coke would become my favorite drink to put into an insulated mug and slyly sip through a straw. (Because no adult was the wiser that I was drinking… right? 
)
On one summer evening when I was 16 going on 26 and had had a few too many sips of JD and Coke through my straw, I decided to quit being such a prude and stop saying no to cigarettes. By then quite a few of my friends smoked and though I never really felt pressured to start smoking, when I was drunk it somehow looked so cool.
I bummed a cigarette off one of the guys and he lit it for me, claiming that a “lady” should never light her own cigarette. I puffed on it a couple of times before he realized I wasn’t inhaling. I was shown how to properly inhale and pretty soon not only was I drunk; I also had a nice nicotine buzz.
I was feeling pretty good and was about half done with my second cigarette when through my drunken haze, I noticed an intense burning sensation. I glanced down and saw that the cherry of my cigarette had fallen onto my half-exposed chest (I was wearing a low-cut tank top) and it was searing into my flesh! I screamed and brushed it away, but not before I had a nasty burn on the top of my left boob, right above my cleavage.
I rushed to the beer cooler and grabbed a handful of ice to put on my burnt chest and when the guys at the party saw me doing so, there was, of course, much bantering about starting a wet T-shirt contest. So while my chest still hurt, it was ignored for the time being as I fervently declined taking part in said wet T-shirt contest. And though I continued to drink my JD and Coke, for the rest of the evening I declined all other cigarettes offered to me.
In the years that have passed since that night, I have smoked off and on (though never seriously) and when I met A. I gave it up all together. But whenever I look down at my chest, I am reminded of how hazardous smoking could have been to my health and appearance by the scar that the first time left on my cleavage.
11 August 2005 at 15:29
Hi, her via micheles site, totaly random pick.
I must be the only person in the world that had absolutely no interested in smoking, Why is that? Having reached the ripe old age of 40, I have not only never tried them, I no longer hang around people that do smoke. I used to in my 20’s and it was the main reason why I stop going to pubs. I valued my lungs and my life. I’m also the type that never followed the crowd just to be “in”.
Never tried drugs at all, never wanted too.
Sorry to rant on but I’m just so anti smoking, I need to vent.
18 August 2005 at 16:52
A lesson for the impressionable young ladies: Cigs will ruin your chest, inside and out!
Never really caught the smoking bug. I enjoy an occasional (once or twice a year) cigar, but that’s the extent of it.