Smoking......

Remember your first smoking experience -- with the regular, old legal cigarettes? My first puff took place at an aunt's house just up the street and cross the rairoad tracks from 212. ......It just so happened that the cousins on my mom's side of the family naturally fell into similar age groups. There were the older cousins, then came my group, then there were maybe three age levels below me. The only female among the older cousins and I were close. An odd kind of close. Maybe an older/younger sister type relationship? (Not having a sister, I wouldn't know.) We weren't necessarily friends because she liked to boss me around -- more like a mother!

One day, when her parents were at work, and I was visiting my grandmother's house on Avenue Z, the two of us walked to her empty house. As I recall, it was close to her birthday and she was sure her birthday present was hidden somewhere in her house, and she was determined to find it while her parents were away and the house empty. ......She drug me along thinking the two of us could get the job done twice as fast (before our grandmother missed us and came looking!). Two could look twice as fast as one because as she searched, she'd yell orders for where she wanted me to search. She was one bossy bitch.

I don't remember if we found her birthday present, but I do remember that we found her parents' cigarettes. Now this cousin was in high school, while I couldn't have been more than six years old. She knew all about smoking, while candy (especially chocolate) cigarettes were as far as I had gotten. So......we find her parent's cigarettes, her eyes light up, she puts her hands on her hips, looks down her nose at me, and haughtily asks me if I've ever smoked before. Wide-eyed I vigorously shake my head from side to side.

"Well," she says, "we're gonna take care of that right now." She lit up, took a drag, handed it to me and said, "Breathe really deep and then swallow." ......Which I did.

After I figured I wasn't going to die, she looked at me and said, "Well, I bet you'll never be tempted to smoke again." Damn straight!

Yes, for some reason this cousin, for years, thought she should be my mentor. Later in life I realized that as she made mistakes, she'd become fearful that I'd make the same mistake. I guess she just didn't think about the age difference. I mean, at seven years old, I can assure you I wasn't thinking about having sex.