Why I Don't Smoke

I don't smoke cigarettes. Never have, never will. Here is my story why:

I was a husky kid. Husky kids like soda (or pop- stupid Midwesterners) and pretty much anything with sugar in general. As such, husky kids are usually prohibited from unfettered access to sugar. So, when a husky kid happens upon a Barq's Root Beer sitting unguarded in the garage, he turns opportunistic and pounds that shit before anybody realizes it's gone.

The problem with the Barq's Root Beer in question is that my dad had used it as an ash can (he doesn't smoke any more). I didn't know this, and my sugar-glazed eyes didn't allow time for my brain to question why there would be a half-empty can of soda in the garage. So I did what any husky kid in my position would have done and took a Winnebago-sized draw off the can. I drank like this gulp of soda would be my last taste of anything liquid. I drank like my life depended on this drink for the sustenance needed to sustain human function. I drank like I was a fat kid who stumbled upon a lost soda.

As soon as I filled my chipmunk cheeks I realized something was wrong. This soda had a texture. It wasn't carbonated like soda should be. It wasn't sweet and slightly herbal like root beer should be. It wasn't syrupy like most flat sodas get. This shit was thick and grainy, sort of like Cream of Wheat. Had my big gulp tasted like Cream of Wheat, I could have dealt. Hell, it may have turned me off of soda. No, instead my gluttonous slurp tasted like an ashy liquid cocktail of all the bad shit that cigarette manufacturers tell you are in their wares: tar, nicotine, farm chemicals, baby feces. I don't even know what those things taste like on their own, but I swear they were in this root beer.

Anyway, I spit out this mouthful of hell as soon as the fat cells moved out of the way of sensory receptors. As the spittle was hitting the car hood, I realized what I had done. I had nearly ingested cigarette ash. All for a little taste of the good stuff. At that point I had an epiphany: I would never smoke a cigarette. Even if smoking were one-tenth as bad as what I had experienced, it was still horrendous. I should have had a second epiphany, which was that I was fat, and had I not been fat, I wouldn't have gotten myself into this mess in the first place.

I stayed husky for a long while after this incident, but I'm proud to say I never smoked a cigarette.