In which the author requires a cigarette and a can

Lance Mannion wrote a piece on cigarettes and memories the American way of sensory deprivation and writing yesterday. I intended to write about it then, but got distracted (go figure). I have the time now.

I smoke. I started when I was 22 and damned well old enough to know better, but I started nonetheless. For me, the smell of a cigarette burning brings back certain, very specific memories: Christmas at my grandparents’ with the klobasi cooking on the stove, my grandmother sharing her potassium drink with us kids (and The Saucy Master knows I still need that), watching The Six Million Dollar Man in the basement rec room of our house in Colorado. I remember grandpa burning his eyebrows after refilling his Zippo. And, for some reason, I think of picking weeds in the strawberry patch to earn spending money for Girl Scout Camp.

When I light the first one of the day, I feel this odd, albeit quite unhealthy, bond to family members I never shared a cigarette with, though I would if I could. I’ve tried to quit, but ended up missing my smoking buddies more than I enjoyed the lack of wheezing.

The smell of that first lit cigarette of the day and the resulting satisfied exhale...a feeling that is approached only by opening a new package of HoHos or having just finished cleaning the bathroom or kitchen for the fifth time in a week (my house can be a wreck, but FSM forbid that my bathroom and kitchen in disarray).

Another sensory memory (triggered by Jennifer’s comment on the above piece Lance wrote): jet fuel. I worked Christmas rush for UPS at DFW airport two years in a row. The money was better than anything I’d earned before, but what stayed with me (longer than my crush on the fork lift driver) was the smell of jet fuel. All of the packages were sorted then put onto conveyer belts where the “package handlers” picked out their packages and shoved them into air freight containers at a ridiculous rate of speed. The smells that permeated the place were vending machine coffee and jet fuel. I can smell a jet flying over before I realize it’s flying over (Southwest has really quiet planes). When I travel, I take a deep breath at the airport because it smells like home. I’m a writer. But jet fuel smells like home.

When we lived in Virginia, the temperature regularly hit 90 with 99% humidity (I could be fudging a bit on the humidity, but not by much). We spent our time outside, all summer, with friends. We’d be on back porches, front porches, play kick-the-can or football, ride bikes, play kickball...we’d be outside with other people. It was sensory overload that never got old. Adults joined in and talked politics, weather, relationships, whatever. But they were outside, too.

Where I live now, near Dallas, I don’t see people on their porches. It’s certainly hotter, but the humidity is low. The only time I see people outside is getting into their cars. Air conditioning has become a crutch (to which I cling gladly and willingly). Sometimes kids play outside, but it doesn’t last long. Oddly enough, they’re outside more during the school year than during summer break. I vaguely know my neighbors, and not from lack of trying. People don’t call up a friend with a question: they Google for the answer. They don’t ask for a cup of sugar: they drive to the store and get a 5lb bag. They don’t sit on the porch and chat: they get on the computer and chat with people they have no intention of ever meeting, nor do they really want to chat with ‘em.

Our attempts to make life more sanitized have led to lives of isolation. And kids with more allergies and asthma than ever before.

I don’t know the point of this. Perhaps turning 35 is making me think of the past more. Perhaps I just wanted to write. But this summer I will, once a week, sit on the front porch and chat on this machine, smoking with my grandparents and drinking sweet tea, instead of being locked in the house away from all the scary people. Who really aren’t all that scary. They’re just not antibacterial.