Day ClI

A civilian again

     By the time I got out I was smoking at least two, and a half packs a day. But now I was a civilian, and smokes were like around seventy five cents a pack, so I had to cut back. Then I got a very stressful job on Wall Street, not as a broker, but in the communications department. I was able to maintain my jones, and smoked just as much as I had back in the air force. Every time you get anxious, you need a little nicotine. It’s become a way of life, and to cut it out, you need to change your life style. I guess we need a life-style adjustment.

    When I was in the service I used to wake up with a cigarette. It was the first thing I did, before washing up. It was also the last thing I did before going to bed. Good thing though, I never acquired the bad habit of going to sleep, or rather needing to smoke in order to sleep. So I never made it a habit of lying in bed with a smoke before going to sleep. Smoking in bed is one of the most dangerous things a smoker can do. Smoking while filling up the tank at a gas station has got to be the worst, and probably the dumbest.

     Overseas we used to sleep in bunk beds in an open bay barracks. Back in Texas we were spoiled, I learned. We were in officer’s quarters there, two men to a room, while most guys live in open bay dorms. That’s the norm. Our bay was a huge place, almost like a gym for emergency victims, with bunk beds arranged side by side. It’s was like a human warehouse. There were columns along the floor, and there were red butt buckets hanging from them.