You Can Stop Smoking in Forty-Eight Days

Chapter One A Little history My cigarette history lasted for thirty eight years. It all started when I was nine years old, that’s when I took my first puff. I grew up in Houston, Texas. My family lived on a corner lot that had a dead end street on the side of it that lead to the woods. We moved there when I was six years old. The name of the neighborhood is called Oak Forest. There was dear, fox, rabbits, turtle’s horny toads and all sorts of little creatures with ponds and a small bayou that divided the neighborhood from our old neighborhood. Oh it had all the excitement a kid would ever want, with fireflies and bats that came out at night. It even had a horse pasture with ponds that we later found. We picked black berries and raspberries, they were everywhere in the summer. I was a big animal lover and a nature nut. I had cats, dogs, bird, turtle’s, and even pet lizards that would hang out on my shoulder. One time I spent a few days collecting caterpillars. I had so many, in two very large oval shaped glass containers, all containers were made of glass back then. They were all so beautiful and colorful, I had every color you can imagine, they were so cool to watch, I loved them. I let them go together on the ground in the woods, and watched as they all crawled away to their freedom. I was so amazed by them. One thing my parents taught me was to love and respect all creatures in nature. This is where I found my most private inner connection with Jesus. I rescued several dogs and cats all the time and would buy can food for them from the store at the end of our street. I collected coke bottles, used my allowance and lunch money, which was the milk money, because my Mom made my lunch. I had special places in the woods where I would meet with my stray dogs. This was my secret but then some of them started to follow me home. So I began to find homes for some of them. One very special dog that followed me home, I had her for eighteen years. Her name was Christian, my sister named her. My Mom and Dad were big animal lovers too. I thanked Jesus for this in daily chats of prayer talk. Mom used to wait till Christian woke up to make my bed after I went off to school, I was so happy about this, I felt her love and respect for animals too. I had two brothers and one sister, I was the youngest. We built a club house. As a few years passed, one of my brothers and I kept up our club houses, we had a few other kids from the neighborhood that joined us. Together we built swings that we climbed high in the Oak tree’s to reach. We built two of them, they both had seats made from tree branches. We would rotate and take turns swinging as it involved always having three, someone on the ground to swing it up to the other in the in the tree, that would pass it to the one swinging. It was back when Jonny Weissmuller was on TV as Tarzan. He was the first and original Tarzan actor. We all loved being in nature so much it was so exciting and full of adventure. Then one day while we, there were about four of us this day, one said he had a secret to tell and we all promised not to tell anyone. This was the first time I took a puff of a cigarette. Yes that was the secret. My brother took one puff, coughed, and never did it again. But two boys and myself liked it even though we coughed too. So that was the next big secret for me to keep. I remember the three of us used to take turns sneaking a cigarette from our parents. As we took turns taking puffs sharing one cigarette at a time. Now that I look back on it, my brother was the smart one, he wanted nothing to do with sucking smoke in his lungs. After all I was mostly influenced by billboards and commercials. Little did I know what I was in for. This was back in the day when Mom would say, be home before dark. We all played and before the sun went down went home for shower, dinner family time, or out to play in the front yard. I was very blessed to have kind parents, they both were great. They did smoke, but of course that helped me out when it was my turn to bring a cigarette. One day some of us were out by a pond that was on private land, where the horses were. Then I met Mr. Powell, he told us how his wife had died and if we wanted we could stay on his property. One kid asked if it was ok if we fish in his ponds, I asked if I could pet his horses. Mr Powell was even kinder than that and he said if we wanted we could help him with the horses and in return ride them. He said only the horse had to like us to. He said “you will know which one is for you to ride.” I picked and was attracted to an Appaloosa mare. She was a white, with lots of black spots evenly spread out on her body. Mr Powell told me, “No one has ever been able to ride her, she throw’s everyone off. That’s why I named her Nuisance.” As I looked at her she was looking at me and I felt connected. I went over to her and just talked. The next day I brought her an apple and a carrot to see what she liked. I wanted her to be my friend and horse to ride. That’s exactly what happened. We became the best of friends. I remember the day I got on her. She never objected. One of the other kids tried and she threw him off, he too had one horse that only he could ride. Nuisance was never aggressive with me and let me ride her whenever I wanted, some days we would just hang out and walk around together. I never smoked around her as she did not like that. By the time I was fourteen and in the eighth grade, I started smoking more and more. As now it was also the cool kid thing to do. Sneaking and smoking before school. Then I was fifteen before I knew it and smoking all the time. My dad caught me one day. He asked me how long I had been doing this. So I told him everything. He hesitated but was happy for my honesty. I felt so grown up as I was talking to my Dad about cigarettes, he let me smoke around him on a few occasions. He told me I wished you didn’t but since your going to anyway it’s ok to smoke around me in private, but not to tell Mom just yet. As the years went by I turned eighteen. Back then this was the legal drinking age. I was already drinking with a few friends. I dropped out of school at sixteen, and was a bit of a rebel. Little did I know that bars would add to even more smoking. If you have ever drank alcohol, you know exactly what I’m talking about. For those of you that never drank, it’s just another thing to keep the one drinking occupied with, and ends up going hand and hand with it.