The Smoking Champion of Central Ohio

I smoked for seventeen years, despite the fact that I knew that smoking was a totally stinky, gross habit that made your teeth brown and your lungs all black and furry.  Why did I smoke?  God knows. Probably because it was better than the alternative: eating potato chips all day.  About six years ago, however, I quit, and life has been much better without cigarettes. 

My mother disagrees, however, and she sees her habit of at least sixty years as an accomplishment in longevity, rather than an exercise in walking the razor’s edge of emphysema and lung cancer.  And, to her credit, if smoking were an Olympic sport, she would probably have more medals than Michael Phelps.  He has 22 medals, by the way, so my mom would have at least 23.  I realize this would be difficult, but that is what I am telling you: my mom knows all the tricks.

Trick #1: Start early.  My mother, on last check, got up around 6 am most mornings.  To go to work?  No.  To get a leg up on the competition, smoking-wise.  Every morning, she jumps out of bed (in my mind, she throws her arms up in the air and shouts “Hello, world!” but that probably doesn’t really happen), showers, gets dressed, and comes downstairs to the dining room table so she can start rolling and smoking.  Rolling?  Yep.  She rolls her own cigarettes.  When smokes stopped being a buck fifty a pack, my mother, a champion cheapo, invested in a cigarette rolling contraption, and made friends with the guy at the loose tobacco store.  So every morning, you can hear the rhythmic cha-chunk, cha-chunk as she rolls her own.  One time, her little contraption broke, and she paid my son, like, $25,000 to fix it.  It was either that, or just start eating loose tobacco.  And the woman does have standards.

Trick #2: Be Classy.  My mom started smoking in the days when a cigarette was elegant and sophisticated.  So to keep that element of class up, my mother has found the perfect receptacle in which to carry around her cigarettes: GladWare.  What is GladWare?  It is like Tupperware’s imbecile cousin.  Well, what do you expect a 78-year-old woman with forty loose cigarettes to do?  Carry them in her hands?  That would be ridiculous.  With the GladWare, her precious smokes are protected from rogue water spills, hostile weather conditions, unexpected tumbles, and more.  Also, no thief would ever steal GladWare containers.  Even thieves have standards.  Now, you might wonder, “Does she really take the GladWare everywhere?  Because I heard that your mother, despite the fact that she is 78 years old, is also a tour guide.”  If you are saying that, you are correct.  My mother is a tour guide, because she does not let her age dictate her awesomeness, and also because she figured out that being a tour guide is the cheapest way to travel as much as she wants.  As I mentioned before, she is quite a cheapo.  On those occasions when the GladWare is simply too gauche for the occasion, she has a special leather pouch that she purchased on the cheap in Mexico that she wears on a lanyard around her neck.  Yes, it’s a cigarette lanyard.  And yes, it’s beaded.  Let your imagination do the work for you, folks. 

Trick #3: Don’t let the occasion stop you from smoking.  Here is a true story: many years ago, my mother and I were in Paris.  I saw all the great sights: Notre Dame, the Champs-Élysées, the Louvre….you name it, I toured that motherfucker up.  My mother, on the other hand, smoked all the great sights.  We got to Notre Dame, and she was like, “That’s okay, I’ve already seen it.  You go on in.”  So I did, and she sat outside and smoked.  The Louvre?  Same thing.  She was like, “Take all the time you want.  I’ll be out here,” as she caressed her cigarettes and lighter.  And, sure enough, when I came out, she was gabbing with all of the other Louvre smokers.  Ah, Paris.  By my count, the woman has smoked her way through most of Europe, a great deal of Central America, and almost every state in the Union.  Worthy of 23 gold medals?  I should say so. 

Trick #4: Find your own personal nirvana.  For my mother, it’s the casino.  Think about it: where else can you smoke, drink bottom-shelf liquor, and play the slots at the same time?  The best trick is to find a casino on Native American land, where you can also buy cheap cartons of cigarettes (it would not surprise me to find out that my mother was the kingpin of a reservation smuggling operation) and then smoke them all while staking your claim on a one-armed bandit.

Trick #5: Break the mold.  Sure, most 78-year-old smokers are on ventilators by this point, but my mother comes from a long line of old ladies (on both sides of her family!) who smoke, drink, and recklessly drive giant automobiles until they’re 100 years old.  She doesn’t plan on going anywhere, and her membership in no fewer than five book clubs, a couple of bowling leagues, water aerobics, and, of course, her job as a tour guide, keep her healthier and more active than many of the forty-year-old lazy bitches I know. I mean, the woman’s lungs probably look like Chernobyl at this point, but you have to kind of admire that she’s like, “Listen, everyone has a talent, and this appears to be mine.  Quite frankly, it would be selfish of me not to explore my talent to its greatest potential.” 

Well, you got me there, Mom. 

See You in the Fall

Every runner falls.  That’s just a fact.  I don’t know why, but I don’t know a person who runs regularly who hasn’t taken a spill.  Some fall spectacularly, like a friend of mine who was shot off the back of a treadmill and crashed into the wall like a rag doll.  Some simply crumble gracefully to the ground, felled by some unknown footfall, ninja rock, or muscle weakness. 

I for one, believe in going big or going home.  My most spectacular fall came during a ten mile run several years ago when I was prepping for a half-marathon. 

It was a beautiful mid-September day, and I was training for an October half-marathon.  It was my third half, and I was suffering from an almost unbearably painful hip injury, which I partially blame for what’s going to happen a few paragraphs from now.  I probably wasn’t lifting my feet the way I should.

I was exactly as far away from my house as I could possibly get in my run – about five miles away, deep in the heart of an inhospitable place called Upper Arlington- and had literally just made the turn that pointed me towards home.  Five miles down Northwest Boulevard, and this run, one of the most painful I had ever endured, would be over.  And then it happened.

Before I knew what was going on, I had caught my foot on an uneven stretch of pavement, and I was falling. 

“WHOOOOOOO-OOOOOO-OOOOOOO-OOOOO-OOOOOO-AAAAAAAA!”  I yelled, arms flailing, body trying to right itself.  For a moment, I got my feet under me, but only for a moment.  “WHOOOOOAAAAAA!” I yelled one more time, and, like a long jumper who had gotten an especially impressive plant on my takeoff foot, I went flying.

I remember actually being parallel to the ground as I went flying through the air, my arms out in front of me like Superman, surveying the ground before me.  For a moment, I thought that I shouldn’t put my arms out to break my fall, because that’s how I’d broken my wrist in fifth grade.  Then I thought about the alternative, which was landing face-first, and that seemed like a bad idea, too.  So finally, as I was flying through the air, still yelling something that had settled in at “Gaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggg!!!!!!”  I settled on trying to land on my side, avoiding hitting the sharp, pointy parts of myself like my chin and elbows.  What ended up happening was that I crashed into the ground in three separate moves –shoulders first, hands and face next, and then the rest of my body.  I slid, headfirst like a drunken Pete Rose, along the concrete sidewalk, until I came to a stopping place in the middle of the entrance from the street into the Barnes and Noble parking lot. 

“Murg,” I said, not having the strength or energy to enunciate any words in the English language.  I took a quick death check.  Not dead.  Dying?  Maybe.  I had either knocked the wind out of myself, or broken a rib.  There were lots of places that stung like the devil.  I may or may not have hit my head.  I lay there for a minute to see if I would die or get hit by a car.  Neither happened, and the good news was that my hip no longer hurt.  Yay!  The bad news was that I was five miles from home, had no phone, and was lying in the entrance to a parking lot.  “Murg?” I whined plaintively, as one car after another drove right past me. 

After a bit, I realized that it was ridiculous to lie in a parking lot, and that I should probably move to a more attractive location to die and/or find a phone.  It was early enough that the Barnes and Noble wasn’t yet open, so gingerly, I began my search for somewhere that was open so I could call for help.  I knew there was a place about a half mile away – about a ten minute walk. 

Literally, after less than a minute, I decided that this walking carefully so as to avoid further injury to myself was for the birds, and I decided to give running a shot again.  My adrenaline was ramped up through the roof, and, despite the fact that I had blood running down my legs and hands, it didn’t feel any worse than walking or lying in the parking lot.  Since I could still breathe, I figured that my ribs were not broken, but my pinkie finger was starting to resemble a young eggplant.  I also realized that this was one of my last chances for a long run before the half, and that runner voice inside of me told me to quit trying to get out of my long run, and just keep going until I got home.  Which I did.  

Moral of the story?  Several.  One: running is dangerous.  Two: people in Arlington will leave you for dead in the middle of their sidewalks.  Three:  a sprained pinkie finger costs $180.00 to treat at the urgent care.  Four: if you’re going to fall, fall big.  At least you’ll get a war story out of it. 

Shenanigans

So, let me just start out by saying that I think you should put whatever the hell you want on your Facebook, Twitter, etc. personal media account.  I have friends who read the Huffington Post, and seem to repost every single thing on that paper.  Fine.  I have friends who read the Drudge Report and can't shut the hell up about it.  Okay.  Do what you have to do.  It's your social media account. 

But I just have to say, that when you’re busy reposting stories and sending out “inspirational quotes” that your dumbass friends forwarded, you might just want to take a moment and find out where that stuff really came from.

Take for instance a recent "inspirational quote" that has made its way around the internets:

• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
• You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
• You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.
• You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
• You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
• You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
• You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.
• You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves

  --Abraham Lincoln

Here’s the problem: Lincoln never said this.  The moment I saw the first line, I called shenanigans (because you HAVE to call it) and quickly typed into my trusty Google search engine, “You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.” First thing that came up?  “Things Abraham Lincoln never said.”  The statement above was written in 1942 by William J.H. Boetchker, a minister and motivational speaker.  According to Wikipedia, Boetchker was, basically, the Tony Robbins of the 1940’s (my blog has been very educational today.  You’re welcome.)  There’s a big difference between a travelling preacher and the man who kept this country from fracturing into a million pieces.  And excuse me if I’m getting pissy here, but it is shitty enough to misquote someone.  It is one thousand times worse to misquote someone in order to forward an agenda that is opposed to what that person believed in. 

Abraham Lincoln was a man of the people (he was also a vampire hunter, but that's a different story).  If you asked ten people what kind of person Lincoln most strongly identified with, I’m guessing that a good number of those people would say, “slaves” or “soldiers.”  Read the Gettysburg Address.  Just read it – it’s three paragraphs long.  It will bring tears to your eyes (if you love your country.  Otherwise, you should probably go live in Canada.)  Lincoln was not a man who wrote about the equality of all humanity, and then turned around and said, “Now that that’s settled, let’s make sure the rich are amply taken care of!”  In his second inaugural speech, the poor doomed man said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”  Again, does that sound like a man who was more interested in caring for the winners than the losers? 

And I guess this is the bottom line: if you think the most important work that you can do here on this earth is make sure that RICH PEOPLE GET A FAIR SHOT, then you do your thing.  I happen to disagree with your life choice, but whatever.  There’s no need, however, to attribute these thoughts to people who never said them to try to make them more legitimate.  When it comes down to it, the Bible tells us over and over again to HELP THE GODDAMN POOR (that’s a direct quote from the Bible).  It constantly amazes me, however, that so many Christians, instead of actually setting off and doing that work, instead work their asses off to find a loophole.   

But, enough of that.  I’m getting too worked up over this, and, as Abraham Lincoln may have said, “If you cannot beat them, then you should join them.”  So, in the spirit of making up shit to suit your own personal agenda, I leave you all with this quote from another one of our great former Presidents:

“People on ludes should not drive.” 
-- Ronald Reagan