I was first exposed to cigarettes when I was in the womb. Mom was a smoker at the age of 16. She quit school and went to work in the shoe shop like many of her peers did at that time. You didn't need an education to work, jobs were everywhere. Cigarettes were cheap and a large percentage of the population smoked. It seemed that the worst health hazard from smoking at a young age back in that era was that perhaps it would 'stunt your growth'. Mom never grew more than 5 feet tall. (Probably just a coincidence). Mom and Dad got married in Feb of 54, shortly after I was "on the way". Folks back then were not aware of the dangers and risks associated with smoking while pregnant. So many of us smokers got our first dose of nicotine thru the umbilical cord.
From my birth in Dec of 1954 my odyssey with cigarettes began with exposure to second hand smoke. Every where you went there was someone smoking. No one gave it a thought that perhaps the smoke filled rooms and automobiles might harm the ones that didn't smoke. Smoking just seemed to me as a normal thing for grown-ups to do. I fully expected to become a smoker myself someday. Thanks to some candy manufacturer's, I was able to simulate smoking by buying some candy cigarettes. I was very careful to hold it between my fingers like a real one and put the filter end in my mouth. The end you would light, if it was a real one, was dyed red to simulate the lit end. Candy cigarettes even came in the popular brands and similar styles that the real ones came in. This helped in establishing a loyalty to a particular brand at a young age I suppose. Now that I reflect back, I seem to recall a toy cigarette that would emit simulated smoke when a kid blew through it. I guess it made me feel good to emulate something that adults did.
I recall getting my first feeling of comfort from cigarette smoke when I was a toddler of perhaps 4 or 5 years of age. I suffered from horrendously painful earaches. I would wake up in the middle of the night with my inner ear throbbing with pain. I remember the sound of drumming, snapping and crackling inside my ears as the drainage from the ear infection would flow and the tissues were swelling. Inevitably I would cry out to Mom. Mom would take me in her arms and bring me to her rocking chair in the living room. She would light up a cigarette, inhale, then very gently blow the warm smoke into my hurting little ear. This always seemed to help relieve the pain, or at least make it bearable. After the cigarette treatment Mom would put a few warm drops of baby oil in my ear, insert a wad of cotton and rock me until I fell asleep. An act of love and compassion from mother to child that meant a lot to me back then, but would probably not be considered a good thing to do in case of earache now.
I got my first actual puff on a real cigarette at around age 10. I recall a real boring afternoon visiting some relatives with my folks. The relatives didn't have any children at home. They had all grown up and moved on. So there I was bored out of my gourd, when I decided I would take a nap in the car while my folks finished their visit. that's when I noticed an ashtray with some partially smoked butts and a cigarette lighter, right there in front of me. Curiosity got the better of me. I chose one of the longest stubs I could find, straightened out the kinks where it had been crushed out, and put it to my lips. I pushed in the cigarette lighter handle , like I had seen mom do many times, and waited for the familiar click that signaled when the lighter was hot enough to light a cig. I took the cherry red tip of the lighter and placed it on the end of the cigarette butt and sucked. I got a mouthful of the foul hot smoke, blew it out, and wondered what the attraction of cigarettes was supposed to be. They tasted awful. I don't think I tried them again for several more years.
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