The Determined Ones

They are the most tenacious people on earth, is what they are.  These are the people who, despite public opinion, despite laws and rules, despite health concerns and despite weather still continue to do the particular activity that they seem to enjoy more than any other.  They do it flagrantly at times.  They seem to enjoy it.  Many are helpless to stop it.  Most of them couldn’t or can’t stop it if they wanted to.  Of course, I am speaking about smokers. 

Nearly every city in the
United States has passed some kind of law that outlaws smoking in public.  If you want to have just a tiny inkling of what segregation must have been like just hang out with smokers.  In
Chicago they are pretty much relegated to areas outside but in some places you can still find smoking sections in restaurants.  You know that one booth way in the corner that has yellowish stains all over the upholstery.  There are about sixty smoker all desperately crowded around this table puffing away as though their life depends on it. 

Smokers have to be the most resilient people in the world.  I have no idea what does this to them.  I know that continued long exposure to smoking causes the skin to get tough and leathery.  I had always thought this was primarily around the face and the fingers.  I am starting to think that this is something that is happening all over their bodies.  It is the only that explains smokers in winter. 

At one time, if you believe old movies and television shows, people smoked everywhere.  Apparently at one time in the delivery room of the hospital you could count on the doctors, nurses and even the mother to all be puffing away on Marlboros while the mother was pushing away.  Push, puff, push, puff.  The baby, of course, would be born, spanked, being crying and then have a cigarette placed in its mouth so it would then shut up.  I am pretty sure this was standard operating procedure from the early 1900s through the 1970s.  I know people who have photographs of their parents, including their very pregnant mothers, from those early days each person with a cigarette firmly clamped between their lips. 

Now of course, they are outlawed everywhere.  You can still find smoking cubicles in the airports but pretty much everywhere else the smokers have to go outside.  It’s almost endearing how they now get together in groups and head outside into the weather and stand in clusters around office buildings puffing away.  There could be a funnel cloud headed right for them and they would just grab on to some kind of pole and continue puffing as the wind caused their legs to fly up behind them and they became parallel to the ground.  It is freezing again here in
Chicago and they still stand outside, most of them without coats, shivering and smoking.  I would feel sorry for them if they weren’t, in fact, smoking. 

It seems to be mostly the
United States that has become obsessed with getting people to stop smoking.  I confess to spending way too much time online.  I even spend time on websites that involve the use of webcams.  Nearly every person online in the UK, Australia and various countries in
Asia are all smoking away like there isn’t a care in the world about what they are inhaling.  In college I roomed for part of a semester with an Asian guy and he smoked constantly.  Apparently those packs in other countries don’t have to have those Surgeon General warnings.  Of course, the Surgeon General is a
U.S. office so I guess those packs wouldn’t have to have his or her particular warning on them now that I think about it.
Still, you would think word would have spread to those other countries by now.  For some reason smoking has never appealed to me.  Maybe it was the fact my father smoked most of my life and has suffered through two heart attacks.  Maybe it’s the fact that smoke from cigarettes smells so horrible I could not imagine inhaling that stuff directly into my mouth and lungs.  Maybe it was all of the scary ads that I used to see that showed infected lungs.  I also remember seeing an ad in the 70s that showed a guy pointing a gun at his head with a cigarette in the barrel and his brains splattered all over the wall behind him.  The implication was that, of course, smoking was the equivalent of putting a gun in your mouth. 

I have never smoked.  I have never gotten drunk.  I have never gotten high.  I once smoked a cigar in a restaurant that promoted smoking cigars and I didn’t particularly enjoy it.  So to me the whole idea of smoking was just never appealing.  I don’t find women particularly sexy when they are smoking.  Nothing can be more of a turn off for me than seeing a gorgeous woman and then seeing her light up.  Mostly because I can see that woman in about twenty years looking all wrinkled and yellowed with nasty yellow teeth.  It isn’t sexy.  It isn’t cool.  Maybe I am a bore but I always just looked at it as a practical matter.  I have problems with food and I have struggled with my weight all of my life.  That’s bad enough on my heart and health so, I always figured, why add alcohol, drugs or smoking to the mix.  Whenever I see someone who is overweight adding smoking to the mix I just feel very sad for that person.  That is a person who really does not love themselves. 

Still, no matter the laws passed or the weather or how far away from civilization we make them go the smokers still remain.  If a corporation were to build a smoking cubicle on the 108^th floor of their building, just above the television and radio antennas, and hang it over the side of the building so that the only way to reach it were to crawl out on a thin beam, that cubicle would still be filled with smokers.  You would look up at this glass cube and see it  crammed with people of all shapes, sizes and sexes huddled in there smoking and puffing away as if it were the rest of us with the problem and not them. 

There is an incredible industry these days to get people to stop smoking.  There is so much of an industry that a cynical person might think that this is the industry that is actually supporting the tobacco lobby.  Think about it.  If there were no more smokers then the industry that makes all of those nicotine patches and gums and pills and hypno-therapy solutions would go out of business.  Make you wonder if that gum really just feeds the addiction instead of eliminating it.   

In the end only those who really want to stop are the ones who are going to stop.  It’s a clichéd saying but it’s true.  My dad finally did but it only took nearly killing him to get him to do it.  Plus, if freezing temperatures, laws, heat, rain and wind won’t stop these people or the incredible price for cigarettes then nothing will. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

Looking at Weather

I am continually amazed at Midwesterners and how they react to the weather in the winter.  This is the
Midwest.  Every year the weather gets cold and we have snow.  In fact, this year it has been surprisingly, almost distressingly, mild so far.  Still, people complain and whine and moan as soon as  you get a couple of cloudy days strung together or, here in
Chicago, the weather turns off of the lake and we get brisk winds.   

I have written before about my love for winter.  I enjoy the cooler months.  There is a simple reason for that and that is because I am more comfortable with the idea of freezing to death as opposed to dying from heat-related issues.  When you freeze to death you just kind of slow down and go to sleep.  When you die from heat you sweat and your skin dries out and your lips crack and bleed and your tongue swells and you experience dementia and you burn up.   

Also there is the fashion issue.  I am certain you have seen some people out and about during the warmer months wearing clothes that have to make you wonder if they own mirrors or, perhaps, if the mirrors they are using are made in such a way that they do not actually see themselves as they really are.  Look at Anna Nicole Smith back when she weighed roughly the same as a full-grown beluga whale.  She would wear clothes that seemed only to accentuate the fact she was now roughly the same weight of a full-grown beluga whale and eyeing full-grown sperm whale status.   

I, personally, hate my legs.  I enjoy the fact that they still work and that I can stand up and walk but I hate how they look.  They are white and flabby and hairy and, generally speaking, are not fit for human sight.  I don’t enjoy looking at them and figure no one else really would either.  Rather than find out after I have left the house without the possibility of changing I just wear jeans all of the time and that saves a lot of worry and concern.  There’s too much to worry about these days than having to worry about my flab scaring small children. 

You see some of these people, often at malls, walking around.  They are often wearing jeans so tight you have to wonder how someone was able to get into them without Crisco and some sort of machinery.  They are also wearing shoes, mostly open-toed, that also appear three sizes too small.  Their cankles merge with the shoes with bulges that fall over the top straps and pudgy toes screaming from behind more straps like fugitives screaming from behind prison bars.  On top they often wear something that might as well point directly to their rolls of fat with big shiny neon.  You wonder of that shirt is really supposed to bare the midriff or if perhaps the shirt is normal sized but on Fattie Hoochie Mama it just turns out to be a midriff-baring shirt.  They often walk around with purses and jewelry of the gaudiest type, often with gold, and bring as much undeserved attention to themselves as possible. 

I firmly believe some kind of body perspective is needed.  We no longer live in the times where the fattest people are the richest people and, therefore, the fattest people are admired.  While the female form can certainly be fuller for my tastes, there has to be a point where reason takes over.  I don’t mind a woman with extra pounds as long as she is aware of the fact she has them and that not everyone in the world really wants to look at them bulging out from ill-fitting clothes. 

You don’t run across this quite as much in the winter.  This means everyone looks relatively pleasant.  The rolls are hidden beneath sweaters and sweatshirts and long sleeves.  This means the parts of the female anatomy most of us males like to look at are accentuated such as the breasts.  Of course, the sweaters should be reasonable as well.  If your sweater makes you look like some kind of billboard or perhaps a circus tent you should be aware of that as well. 

I like having to wear my leather jacket.  You just can’t get away with wearing cool jackets in the summer time unless you just happen to be in a western movie.  You know the ones I am talking about.  Mostly they are directed by Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah.  You just see whole armies of guys standing in what is obviously the desert and surrounded by sweaty people who look like Mexicans and they are all wearing floor-length duster coats.  At least most of the time the movies allow them to wear light-colored dusters which would make them about half a degree cooler, but sometimes they are even there in the dark or black dusters.  You just have to wonder about that.  Did cowboys really wear long coats like that in the middle of the desert?  Did a lot of cowboys die from heat exhaustion? 

For me there is nothing better than a snow storm.  Snow makes everything look sparkling and clean and white, at least for the first few hours after the snow falls.  Eventually the snow turns gunky and black and nasty and slushy but for a while everything looks new.  There is nothing more beautiful than a schoolyard filled with white snow untouched by anyone.  You can then leave your own footprints as you walk through and leave your own mark.  You can also make snowballs and snowmen.  You really can’t do that when it rains. 

Of course you always hear the weathermen talk about the late-winter rainstorms.  They all speak with relief about the fact that the precipitation is rain rather than snow.  To me, this is not good news.  Rain could mean flooding.  Rain could mean soggy wet leather jackets.  Rain means ruined shoes and huge puddles.  Rain can also mean thunderstorms and thunderstorms can lead to tornadoes and tornadoes do not make the world look sparkling and bright and clean.  Tornadoes have this tendency to make people look dead and houses look like tiny sticks.  A neighborhood scoured to the ground by a tornado is not the same as a neighborhood covered with beautiful crystalline snow. 

So, for me, winter will always be better than summer.  Fall will always be better than spring.  Too many people dwell on the dark parts of both of those seasons and forget to admire the beauty and look for the positives.  Sure the leaves are falling and the plants are closing up but they are just making room for the sledding and snow-shoeing and skiing.  Also you are missing the stunning beauty of the leaves changing color which I will gladly take over a humid, miserable, hot July day any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  I will also gladly take a blizzard over a thunderstorm with those same odds. 

So, you go one and keep whining.  I will be the one going for the pleasant walk in my hat and leather jacket, looking cool, while you sit inside your house and moan. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.