compulsive compartmentalization

I have pictures of my grandfather from the 30’s and 40’s and in nearly every one he has a cigar or a pipe in his hand. He chewed tobacco and cigars (yes chewed) until the day he died at the age of 83. I spent a lot of time with grandpa growing up. I assume this is where I picked up the habit of cigar smoking. It definately didn’t come from my father, who would have been very dissapointed in me if he had ever found out that I smoked them. But in the case of cigars, the apple fell pretty far from that tree.

I love a good cigar. One of my favorite things is sitting on the porch on a warm summer night, smoking a fat cigar while thinking or having a good conversation. I have never smoked cigarettes but I did try chewing tobacco.

Once.

My senior year of high school me and a few friends worked at a gas station and my friend Patrick thought it would be a good idea to go next door and buy a bag of Red Man, just so we could see what it was like. It is important to insert a little wisdom as I look back on this: If you can’t get used to the concept of not swallowing…never ever ever EVER try chewing tobacco. Ever.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: Even after you have gagged on, spit out, and vowed never to try chewing tobacco again, your spit will still have the consistancy of tobacco juice. Do not swallow. For at least a year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2004 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Life, Memories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.