Onion-style Opinion Piece

ARE NON-SMOKERS COOL?
By Kristian





It's the Great American Smokeout Day on campus but you'd think the library had been evacuated for some reason.

"What's going on here?" I ask a boy or a girl that looks eternally twelve.

"It's the Great American Smokeout. We're trying to inform people of the dangers of smoking..."

Bored and not caring what the little voice had to say, I walk over to a big girl (one of the many) because I like big voices and I needed a big explanation on today's big event. She was carrying a sign with the words: Smoking is ugly. I couldn't help but think this girl could look almost pretty if she lost weight and I suggested that she take up cigarettes.

"They act as an appetite suppressor. I'm sure if you get yourself a pack-a-day habit you can take off a good ten pounds. You have a pretty face."

"Really?" She beamed.

"Yeah. The rest of you isn't, however. But it can be."

"But cigarettes? Couldn't I just exercise?"

"That's work. Cigarettes. You light, you inhale, you exhale. You can sit and do it."

"I like to sit."

"Cigarettes and amphetamines. Those are illegal, but you can find over-the-counter amphetamines. They do the trick."

She ran off, handing off her sign as though it were a baton to another big girl. She turned the sign around to show again the words: Smoking is ugly, but under there was a picture of Charlize Theron from the film Monster.

"Smoking won her an Academy Award," I tell her.

She looks at me like I'm made of Hostess.

I back away.

Every year, it's the same old protests. But not this year. This one is a little bit different. A Little bit lacking in signs, really.

"You ever hold up a sign," says a boy that must weigh 92-pounds. "Arms kill. You can't do it for more than 20 minutes at a time."

"Is that why the only people holding up signs are overweight?" I ask Clay Aiken.

One of my biggest regrets is that I smoked for 10 or more years...Nostalgia. Makes me want to smoke a cigarette and think back. Back to those romantic days of smoking. How cool I looked. Sexy, even. Dangerous. Looked like I lived life on the edge. Look at me I'm killing myself and it's sexy, I'd say (to myself...in the mirror).

It's been about two years since my last smoke. I tell this to Ugly Betty who tells me how proud she is of me. She also tells me (with a wink) to look her up in a chat room called: The Birth Defects. Before I can ponder what that means, I get to witness my first attack on an unsuspecting smoker.

"What happened? The library burn down?" The smoker asks in earnest.

Then it's like someone's shouted: Lost has been canceled. The crowd of non-smokers has turned into a ravenous group. They attack the smoker. They call him vicious names like "Smoker" and "Nicotine lips". There's hair-pulling and scratching and spitting. I'm seeing a side of the non-smokers I like. One nerd throws a bucket of butts on the smokers head. Another one says: "This is your lungs," pointing to his crotch, "And here are lungs on cigarettes." He kicks the smoker in the balls. I laugh even though that one was stupid. This is your lungs on cigarettes? He tried.

After spending several hours, taunting smokers, making them cry, and oh the laughing. There was plenty of laughing. It all had to come to an end.

The sun goes down and the nerds go home to bed and a new group joins the mix. This group of goth-kids refer to themselves as: The Coffin Nails. Their leader is Niles.

"What are The Coffin Nails all about?" I ask Niles.

"We don't hold up signs."

Signs are very unpopular this year.

"We're known for our unorthodox ways of getting people to quit smoking," he tells me very softly. So softly, I have to ask him to repeat himself five times.

"We're not unorthodox," A blond kid who isn't very goth says. "We're Christian, right? I mean, not practicing. All hail evil. Not Satan cuz that's not what we're about either, ok. Right, guys?"

I was starting to miss the nerds from earlier. There's something more disturbing about a nerd-virgin crushed in eyeliner. It's not as cool as you'd think. I decided to call it a day.

I went home and thought back on my day and the friends I made (and hope to never see again in my life) and I decided to not smoke a cigarette.