" I'm smart ! I can think of something !! "

It was a bleak, Saturday night in February.The kind of night you think about thanking God,for your cozy home, be it ever so humble. But then you forget about it and just see what's on the tube,after you light up a Winston,"Tastes good, like a cigarette should!" I know it's late,but the baby is finally sleeping good and I don't have to work Sunday... Let me just look out front first,to see how much snow has come down so far? Boy! It looks like 3 or 4 inches already... I hope Marge doesn't have a terrible time getting home in the morning. Well this must be " Casa Blanca ". Humphrey Bogart Movies are always good, even if you only have a black and white T.V. It always seems odd, how in those heroic times everybody and their brother smoked at least three packs of non-filtered a day! Like now, as I'm watching the last half hour of the North African White House, he's got his " Zippo " fired up again! And that reminds me it's " Light up Time " for Ray too...The shirt I have on has two breast pockets, Pretty fancy eh? So with the flat of each hand I slap each one three times in staccato fashion.No crinkly lump greets my sensitive 32 year old fingers? Oh theres my smokes over there on the coffee table.Phew! For a moment there, panic had griped my spine.Okay, I'll just get one...Thunderation!!! This package is empty! Regret swept over me for coming up with the plan to limit my smoking by, buying one pack at a time.But after all,I was a supervisor of Respiratory Therapy at The University of Pennsylvania Hospital.And of course I was witness every day to the long list of horrors that smoking led to... But I need a cigarette Now!!! I know there must be a butt,or two around the house somewhere?It was true...Only Marge had dumped the ash trays, before she went to work, in the garbage!Come on! I'm smart, I can think of something? ..... I can't go anywhere because of the baby...Think! Wait , out in the car... I remember;last Summer Margie was driving, and I was in the back seat, I can't remember why, but I think I put out almost a whole one in the rear ash tray!Wow! Coat and boots will be needed to wade through that 5 or 6 inches of snow...I better bring a broom to,to push the accumulation off the top of the rear door...Now,to ease that metal hatch open,and see if I'm saved? Yes!It is a long one !! Now to carefully,tenderly place it into my flapped coat pocket,and make my way back to the warmth of The White House on Redford Road. Once inside breathing on and through my only avenue of a return to calm, re humidified it enough to almost straighten it out... As I gratefully lit up,the thought crashed through my mind that "I better go right to bed now, and then I can get some more in the morning..." Looking back on my panic on Monday morning, I came to the realization that smoking was not a habit for me. No! It was an addiction...Nine months later my wonderful son was five months old, and I realized if I didn't quit smoking, I would never see him grow up. After all I had my first Heart Attack at twenty six! And after five months of No Smoking I had felt like Superman! So, for a couple of reasons I started again...But this time I'm going on"The Five year Plan". That's right!I would be lying to myself if I just said " I'm never going to smoke again!".So I won't do that. What I'll do is stop smoking for five finite years. And then my body will have healed enough to smoke again! And Live!So Monday morning I did not light up before I started the car, on the way to work.That was the beginning of the Thanks Giving Holiday week.I was off on the holiday and with the In Laws over and all, I almost relapsed. By the Next Monday though,people at work started saying that they weren't sure it was me, because there was no cigarette in the middle of my face...For the next three or four months I simply went crazy for a time , and then I discovered I had a whole new personality inside, that I didn't know...After just one year I stopped dreaming about cigarettes, and I found I could even have a couple of beers without looking for one.The truth is though once an Addict always an Addict. Say, is that your Zippo ?