My father gets headaches if he’s around smoke for more than a few minutes. One thing this lead to is avoiding restaurants at peak hours. So when I was a kid if we ate out we always went at 11;00 for lunch or about 5:00 for dinner. The idea was to be out before the people in the smoking section had time to light up their after meal cig. Of course occasionally you’d get the before meal cig too.
But as a result even 20 years after smoking in restaurants was banned where I live all of my family is in the habit of eating early.
Ha, I remember being a kid. I would be with my parents at a campground all Summer. We had a fairly small trailer. I remember one night there was a NFL(Patriots) game on and my parents and another couple were in the trailer watching. There was so much smoke that I felt like I was going to die.
I ended up screaming at them all. I think they were actually shocked at how angry and loud I screamed. They didn’t say a word. Turned off the TV, took a few things and left the trailer. They even made sure to keep the door open so the air would vent through the screen door.
My father died of lung cancer less than 10 years later in '89.
I grew up in the 80’s / early 90s when smoking indoors was still common (restaurants, buses, etc). You just kind of got used to it.
Eventually I started smoking, and it was less of a bother 😆 (have since quit).
The thing I never could figure out, even as a smoker, was how people smoked in a car with the windows rolled up. It was unbearable even being the one smoking. Even in the dead of winter and negative one million degrees outside, I always had to have a window cracked.
Same here. My Dad was a smoker and I remember sitting on the top deck of buses with him whilst he smoked. Can’t remember ever noticing the smell really. I started smoking myself at 15. Quit about 10 years later. Now I can smell it so clearly. I can tell if someone is a smoker as soon as I get anywhere near them.
I live in a country where there are still bars where you can legally smoke indoors. One of my favourite bars is like that even though I am a non-smoker. I always feel like I can burn all my clothes after an evening there. And the hangovers are way worse.
Going on a long car trip in winter as a kid sucked so hard. Parents are in the front seats, you’re in the back. They’re smoking more often than normal because of boredom. You’re freezing your ass off because they’re cracking the window, and the smoke is awful.
Ask my asthma. I dunno if there’s direct causation but being exposed to cigarette smoke from infancy damn sure didn’t help.
Same dude. I don’t know about you but I also had sinus and ear infections out the ass growing up, which I don’t know for sure was related but it sure seems like it would be.
Absolutely. I was constantly sick. Eventually had tubes placed in my ears and apparently I almost died on the operating table during my tonsillectomy. Fun times!
You really did get used to it in the sense that I don’t remember it making me sick to be around it(my parents, aunt and grandma all smoked around me from birth to about 14 when I was diagnosed with asthma). But now if I’m around any cigarette smoke at all I’m sick for at least a week (congestion, cough, sinus shit) and I don’t know how I rode in a car as a child with 4 adults ripping butts. Disgusting.
Both my parents smoked in the 90’s and I never really thought about it until I was like 12, by then it was being banned in many more places. I thought cars smelled weird that didn’t reek of smoke. I also sometimes smelled of smoke and probably smelled more to people who were not around smokers. Being around smokers from 0 -18 knock on wood I haven’t yet had been diagnosed with anything. Second hand smoke everyday. I never took it up, as we know its not good for you. But I dont mind being around smokers, brings a sort of nostalgia for me the second hand smoke that is.
You grew up in it and didn’t notice.
But after the bans the first thing that stood out is you don’t need to bleach every piece of fabric you took outside every day. The first time I went out, woke up the next day and my clothes didn’t smell… you know, smoky I was very confused. Up until that point I assumed that was just what happened to dirty clothes, I didn’t realize it was all the cigarettes.
one of the first times I noticed was when it was banned on flights
There’s a local bowling alley I went to as a kid. I didn’t go back until 2-3 years after the indoor cigarette ban. Once I went in I immediately said “Something’s different…”
Then someone said there’s no more smoke, that was my Aha! moment.
My wife tells me that when she used to go clubbing she would come home with burn marks/holes in her dresses all the time.
Got one on my brand new t-shirt I had bought with my student loan money… That was fucking annoying.
Man, it was rough.
At family friends you’d take a break to get some fresh air or a bathroom break, as they smoked indoors and you had to be nice.
At restaurants I would push my parents for non smoking. One time they skipped that option and it impacted me so much I threw up all over the back seat.
They no longer opted for the smoking section ever again.
Man smoking in restaurants was wild in hindsight. It was always disgusting but it was normalised. The thing that always bothered me the most was that when i was out with my family as a child was that we were like 12 people and one guy smoked, we usually sat in the smoking section. That was also the case when i was older, that one or two smokers out of 10 people were always the cranky bitches.
Or sitting in a restaurant where the non smoking tavle was next to the smoking table. So you would sit back to back to a guy who was smoking while wou were eating. Wild times, glad that shit is overYou are totally right, it’s crazy to think back to it. I was that 12 year old once or twice.
Even more screwed up was there were smoking sections with walls or without. Without… well, it’s smoke. So it’s going into the non smoking section. With walls? It was like an aquarium.
It’s still a thing in most of the world.
I’d probably say “in much of the world” unless you want to take the time to prove your claim.
You can say as you wish, the limitation on smoking is a first world concept.
This is completely incorrect. In fact when I studied Spanish in college, one assignment had us reading about an anti smoking campaign in Argentina from the early 2000s.
Okay? There was one here in Southeast Asia, yet everyone still smokes indoors. Some assignment you did in a language class about a campaign in a country you haven’t visited is irrelevant.
I then moved to Argentina, so there’s that…
My family smoked like chimneys. I closed myself in my bedroom and avoided un-necessary contact.
Great grandmother got emphysema and died.
Great grandfather got throat cancer, a tracheotomy, and died.
Grandfather got lung cancer and died.
Mom got cancer and survived.
Dad had a massive heart attack and died.My parents only smoked when they had company at home and it was still so dusgusting. Not the smoke itself necessarily, but the morning after when the whole house smelled like old ashtray.
I had a neighbour growing up who would smoke like a crazy person. Her house was quite literally yellow on the insinde. Surprisingly she lived to be almost 70.There are some that manage to make it a long life with what most would have issues with (I.e. a lifetime of smoking.) A good friend died recently and he made it to what I would consider a long life. Was able to retire and stay active for years. Got diagnosed with cancer, two weeks later dead after the first chemo therapy. I’m very happy he didn’t live a much longer life - the pain that would have put him in would have been unbearable, and given how quickly he passed in guessing the cancer was fairly advanced…
We just sat in the non-smoking section.
Cigarette smoke is very clever and is sure to respect a small piece of red rope strung across the restaurant.
And the real answer is we were all just used to the smell of cigarettes. Going for a meal or going to see grandad? Put on some old clothes that can be put in the washing when you come home because they’ll stink. It never seemed to occur to anyone that they could just stop letting people smoke indoors.
We bowled a lot
Well at that age I was a baby so I was mostly close to the floor
Well I became a smoker myself (I quit in 2011) but even then I hated smoking indoors and never smoked in my apartment.
Workplaces were the worst, I kept catching other people’s second hand smoke at work. Worst was when I went to an encounter group type thing and a guy was smoking and I got a faceful… and bronchitis for the rest of the trip. And that was in the 90’s
At least in my own home and car I could set the rules and rules was take that shit outside
in the '90s*
It really sucked when people could smoke anywhere. I remember so many times when I was at a restaurant just starting into a nice meal and suddenly all I could smell or taste was cigarette (or cigar) smoke. It was gross.
I also remember when airlines had a smoking section, which was usually the back several rows. I remember asking for a seat in the non-smoking section, and the one I got was one row in front of the smoking section; there was probably more smoke there than in the last row of the smoking section.
