Do You Mind if I Smoked?
Good thing I wasn’t still smoking in August 2019, when I started working at the American Heart Association. I quit 20 years earlier, after an epiphany while driving my red Jeep Grand Cherokee with the window wide open on a glacial February morning; I dangled a cigarette out the window so I wouldn’t get ashes on the car’s interior. Freezing, I wondered what the hell I was doing. But this is not simply a post about a smoker's recovery. It’s also a celebration of the glamorous side of the world's worst habit. Now, Voyager In classic Hollywood movies like Now Voyager , smoking served as a stand-in for sex. You knew what time it was when Paul Henreid lit Bette Davis’s cigarette. According to smoking historian Richard Klein, Casablanca is an “encyclopedia” of smoking . As for me, both of my parents smoked. Dad was a prominent physician and a constant cigar smoker who puffed on the job, even during meetings with colleagues and patients in his hospital office. His justificati...
