I was home-schooled, so peer pressure wasn't a factor, but I still never felt like taking up the habit. I saw no appeal. My parents didn't smoke, so that example probably helped. One grandmother was a regular smoker, and there is an odd twinge of nostalgia when I catch a whiff of smoke that matches whatever brand she preferred, but on the whole, I still hate secondhand smoke. When I attended college, there were crowds of smokers outside the doors of every campus building. They were eventually required to leave a perimeter of clear space, but at the time, it was running the gauntlet every time one entered or exited. Then, I had a stressful call center job for a while, and smoking was heavy there, but I never joined in there either. Not bragging about being vice-free, just not that one.
Reply by @jacobtothe
Comments · 2
Smoking was a strange social thing for me as a teenager and in college. It was just something that almost everyone I knew did. You weren't an outsider if you didn't though, I think mostly people were kind of proud of you for not giving into pressure.
Almost everyone I know that was a smoker in those times is not one now I guess sensibility prevails in the end.
