Lately, I’ve become increasingly of the opinion that smoking is very bad. Actually, I’ve always been of this opinion, but my first year in a public high school has really jump-started my thinking. I believe it was one cold, barren February morn, the temperature at the time must have been... 2º Fahrenheit, when I saw a small group of smokers on the sidewalk in front of our school (our “Designated Smoking Area”) huddled around a few small burning sticks of carcinogens. I found this, to say the least, odd. They would rather stand outside slowly destroying their major organs than go inside, where the temperature must have been... 87º Fahrenheit (our school has a very efficient heating system), sit in lawn chairs, and philosophize. Even though they’d have to do this somewhere other than our school, the main idea is the same.
I began to think, and these were my exact thoughts, “What could possess those psychopaths into this sort of behavior?” During a session of logical thinking (much more important than most will tell you), I deduced the possible reasons for these acts.
Is it under-education? No, no, our teachers pound into our heads constantly the harms of smoking.
Is it pressure from advertising? No, I haven’t seen a billboard for smoking for months.
Is it peer pressure? No, that’s just a myth created by publishers and the Board of Education.
Then it hit me like a safe to the head. These kids are just plain stupid. Why else would one spend tons of time and money destroying one’s internal organs when one could, more quickly and effectively, shove a knife through one’s torso?
If you, the alert reader, are a smoker, you’ll receive no pity from me when you’re on a respirator saying, “Wh... da... iaw... sta... sneo...?” but trying to say, “Why did I ever start smoking?”