I am a closet smoker. No one in my family knows I smoke. Though, one of the grandkids did catch me behind the detached garage puffing away one stressful summer day. I blackmailed him; I knew stuff that he had committed which I promised I wouldn’t tell, but if he did, I would match his tattling and tell his daddy.

Smokers are now grouped with the deadly Mimi viruses, they too can move into your body like secondhand smoke which definitely makes you want to bolt for fresh air. The huddled masses clustered together smoking twenty-five feet from public entryways are now seen as the scourge of society messing up the airways. It’s best to smoke in groups because a lone smoker next to a public building twenty-five feet away from the door will be confronted by strangers wagging fingers saying, “Smoking is bad for you.”  Those are usually the healthy people pointing out my erring way. Hefty people walking past you say nothing. It’s a good thing for smokers that most are hefty and can’t see their feet.

Years ago when the company I worked for designated smoking and nonsmoking rooms, most none smokers sat in the smoker’s room. Five years later the smokers had to go outside and freeze smoke. The nonsmokers went outside as well and froze with them.

Since Washington is a smoke-free state a few of my rich anti-smoking friends now go to Idaho bars; they just like to smoke when they drink, mind you, they voted for that free state smoke law.  

I have a special smoke room in the basement with the window open and a fan going twenty-four seven to blow out the smoke stink. On my nightstand is a Febreze bottle with Clenzair to sprits when the smoke clouds my TV viewing. The only heat is from the waterbed. In the winter I have to get resourceful when my forehead and fingers start to freeze, then I wear a knitted cap with ear flaps and cut-off woolen gloves. I had to hem the frays on the cigarette holding glove after a cigarette ash ignited a fray. Good thing I had bottled water next to my ashtray to douse the flame out. The only fear I have though, should I die in the middle of a very cold winter, someone will find me in my smoking outfit.