I'M NOT WHO I WAS

There's a great song on Christian radio stations that goes, "I wish you could see me now/ I wish I could show you how/ I'm not who I was". I've heard it a hundred times, but I can't remember who sings it. True song, true lyrics, catchy tune.

I'm sure I never looked like Marlene here on the right when I smoked, but I used to smoke cigarettes. A lot of them. Very, very few cigars, but I smoked for over 20 years of my life.

And I can't believe I ever did. I blame it on school. You see I had a late birthday that made me start to college at age 17. Not like good friend Carol Hicks who has a mid-November, who went away to college and was nearly done with her first semester before she turned 18. She never smoked either. But I thought I needed to. I was in college, though some called it post-high school since MTV Community College shared the same campus with MTV High back then. At that time I also started drinking coffee, although with as much sugar as I had to put into it, it probably didn't meet the requirements for coffee per se.

I always hated smoke, too. With the exception of a fire in the fireplace or a campfire, maybe a fresh burn of dry, crackly leaves, I cared for no smoke at all. It's hard to explain today with smoking being so taboo, how most of the people I knew back then lit 'em up. "Smoke 'em if you got 'em," was the call and most did. I don't say that to rationalize my stupidity; it was just a sad fact of life in the day.

Much like Europeans fire them up now. The DeGaulle Airport in Paris is the stinkiest airport I've ever been in. Although there's no smoking allowed on the planes, it's prevalent nearly everywhere else. In fact I still don't understand Europeans. They spend two to three hours eating, they smoke like fiends, they drink the strongest, worst coffee in the world, they sit around at all hours of the day just conversing, they don't seem to engage in sports; I don't get it.

But I didn't get the smoking thing either. I can't believe I ever did it. But I did. Thankfully I quit as easily as I started. But it is so strange to look back and think that I actually had that habit. And if Dietrich looked bad smoking, how do you think I looked?