johnnyhongkong says…

 

I quit smoking on Christmas Eve 2004.  After over 12 years of smoking, it was sort anticlimactic and actually kind of an accident.  I was going to Wisconsin to meet Mary Milan’s parents and didn’t want to smoke while I was there.  So I stopped.  Over 12 years of smoking: Camels, Camel unfiltered, Drums, American Spirits, Gitanes, Export A’s, Peter Stuyvesants, Nat Shermans, and then finally settling on Marlboro Reds, I just sort of stopped (God, my mouth still waters a little bit when I think about those brands, particularly thinking about the Stuyvesants).

When we got back, I fully intended on starting again.  What kept me off the cigarettes was playing this little game to see if I could make it a month before starting again. That month became two, three, and before I knew it fifteen months.  

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an evangelist about quitting.  I’m not going to tell you how great I feel, how bright the world is, any of that crap because I’d be telling you to drink the Kool-Aid.  Quitting smoking sucks but it’s the right thing to do, sort of like leaving an abusive spouse. 

As such, we should celebrate those who quit and with that in mind, let’s give a round of huzzahs to my good friend Conrad Connecticut who is quitting today. 

Maybe he’ll weigh in on how it’s going for him but for now, my two fondest memories of our smoking lives:

1. We were mashers at intramural softball and took it quite seriously even though we smoked while at the plate and on the base paths.  One day, Conrad Connecticut had run out of cigarettes.  Right before he was to go up to bat, he bummed one from me - a Gitane unfiltered – lit it up, took a drag, threw up, sauntered up to the plate and hit a homerun.  It presaged Willie Beamen’s pre-snap vomit routine in Any Given Sunday by years.

2. I lived on Conrad Connecticut’s couch in New York for a year while he was in law school.  I had been coughing and hacking for two weeks but refused to go to the doctor.  He had tests and papers and what not but put up with the terribly sick asshole in his apartment until one day at 3:00 AM, when he literally dragged me to the ER.  They kept me for 5 hours while they had to clear out my lungs and do other procedures because the pnuemonia had progressed so far.  Conrad stuck around and then took me out to breakfast afterwards.  He didn’t even get all up in my business when I lit up the moment we walked out of the hospital.  He did scold me though. 

Nobody celebrates my quitting day because it falls on Baby Jesus’ birthday and bitches get all caught up with his birthday celebration (this is obviously why I love the Jews).  Since Conrad Connecticut is quitting on some anonymous day in the middle of Lent I hope we all remember and check in with him and celebrate this time next year. 

Congrats old buddy. 

Also, for all you smoking, drinking, fast food eating bitches out there, check out this article to see what a drain on the economy you are!  (via Consumerist)