Parents can do everything right and it still might not be enough

For those of you who think your kid isn't a smoker, you should know my parents thought the same thing from the time I was 14 until I told them I smoked when I was 19.

For five years, I could easily get out of the house with a soft pack of cigarettes tucked safely in my sock and an innocent pack of gum in my pocket. I had hiding places in my room that were never uncovered, places to smoke where I could never get caught and I was always careful.

Neither of my parents smoked, and both were adamant in their stance on cigarettes: There would be no smoking for my sisters or me. If we did smoke, we would be severely punished. They did everything right, but it was not enough.

Their stern warnings were no match for my friends who were having so much fun lighting up.

Before and after school (never during), the other smokers and I would gather in the "gravel pit," or parking lot, and smoke before getting into our cars. We didn't want them to smell because many of us were driving cars that belonged to our parents. I was driving a maroon Pontiac station wagon.

We would then caravan down to Arby's and smoke three or four cigarettes before leaving for home. Sometimes I would stop on the way home and have another to tide me over until the next morning just in case I couldn't get out of the house again that night.

When I was a junior in high school, I stopped on the way home from school to smoke. There was a lot of new construction in our neighborhood, and there was a new street where nobody lived yet -- just skeletons of unbuilt houses. It was perfect for smoking.

I stopped for a few minutes, smoked and started back home and realized I didn't have any gum, which wasn't really a problem because only my sisters would be home when I got there.

Only that wasn't the case.

My dad greeted me at the door. He was never home before I was -- and he looked upset. I wanted to run up to my room and gargle before talking about whatever he wanted to talk about. Instead, he told me we needed to talk. I was terribly worried that I was in trouble for something.

We walked into the living room and he sat down on the couch and I sat across from him on a chair. He told me that my papa, his father who lived in Oklahoma, had just died. Then he started crying.

I knew that I was supposed to hug him or put my arm around him. But I smelled like smoke and I didn't want him to know that I had just had a cigarette.

So I sat there, stunned, while he cried, then I went upstairs to my room and gargled with mouthwash. Then I packed for the long drive to Oklahoma.

At the time, I didn't realize that I'd look back on the moment with shame because smoking took away the moment that I was supposed to have with my dad.

Jim Carlile writes for The Olympian. He can be reached at 357-0204.

The Olympian Copyright 2000

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