To Each His Own

Warning: Rant coming, read at your own risk!

Being a smoker, I can say that I wish I never started. Trying to quit has proven very difficult but that doesn't mean it won't ever happen. When I saw the title of this article, I just had to read it because as a smoker, I can tell you that I have felt like a leper to those who don't smoke.

I am not a smoker that will blow smoke in others faces, I ask those who don't smoke if they mind if I light up if we're in a vehicle or in an enclosed area or I just won't smoke around them, we don't smoke in our home, we only smoke in one of our vehicles and rarely when the kids are in it or even others who don't smoke. Pat and I are pretty conscious smokers, if anti-smokers can grasp that concept. There really is such a thing believe it or not.

I was in the smoking area (the only area designated to us criminals) of my college one day where all us terribly diseased people hang out and fill our lungs with death when out the door walks a non-smoker. She proceeded to fake cough and make nasty faces at all of us while she waved her hands and walked through our black cloud of death in our tiny little smoking area outside.

It is people like that that piss me off beyond belief. We are smoking where we are out of the way, we are in our designated area, we are minding our own business, we are following the rules set forth for our disgusting habit and the only people we are hurting is ourselves. Why then, when this girl has NUMEROUS other doors to walk out of would she choose to walk out the smoking area door??????? To cough her little cough and make a spectacle of herself?

I would like to also point out that our smoking area also had a table with an umbrella and some chairs, those were removed and placed in the non-smoking area. Signs were posted stating the we had to be 50-feet from the door or they would take our smoking area away from us and they also put the same sign at that 50-foot mark....is this sort of thing done to non-smokers or people who drink???? I don't think so.

This country is about freedoms, freedom to live your life how you want....no, not everyone is going to like the choices others make and I can respect that. I don't walk through a non-smoking area and scream, "OH MY GOD, you guys don't smoke! That is SOOOOO disgusting?" Why would I do that? Perhaps I'm just not one to judge how others want to live their lives. If people want to smoke, drink, do drugs, be sex maniacs, whatever, that's their choice.

I have voiced on this blog MANY times my disgust for this and that but that doesn't mean I get in the faces of others and demand that they make changes to their lifestyle, or ban them from my life. If people don't like smokers, that's great for them, I applaud that they never picked up the habit or were able to change that aspect of their life. It's only when they have to be so damn mean and nasty and forget that regardless of our nasty habit that beneath that cloud of toxic smoke there lies a human being......smoking does not make the person....nor does not smoking. Would be nice if people could remember what it is to be kind and human to others.....