If I can reference the Mötley Crüe song for the title of this piece… Never was really a fan of that song or the band. But, for those of us of that era, I heard it a lot.
 
Or, maybe better said, Smokin’ in the Girls Room.
 
Anyway… I was hitting up my local Starbucks for my morning jolt. Standing right in front of the place this AM was this Asian woman, deep sucking her cigarette.
 
I don’t know??? Do people not realize how far their smoke travels when they are smoking and how badly it kills the whole environment? Maybe/probably they just do not care.
 
As someone who grew up with parents that smoked, I know that smoke permeates the everything. One time, in junior high, my one friend’s father asked me if I smoked because my jacket apparently smelled like it. Nope. Never did. Just my parents… That’s how one person’s smoking can come to define another person’s life.
 
I can question, why does anyone do it? It smells bad. It makes them smell bad. And, it kills you.
 
My father died of a heart attack at the age of only forty-eight. Obviously, at least in part, from smoking.
 
After his first heart attack the doctor told him he needed to quit smoking. “I like smoking,” was his answer. But, it killed him. Basically destroying my childhood in the process.
 
My father-in-law died of lung cancer. That’s a horrible way to die!  Yet people, knowing all of this, continue to smoke.
 
There she was, this chubby Asian woman, standing right in front of Starbucks smoking. Inside, you could even see her leaning against the glass of the shop.
 
That’s actually against the law, at least here in California, where you have to be at least twenty-five feet away from a business if you want to smoke. But, like most smokers who smoke, they don’t give a shit about the rules or the life of anyone else.
 
I don’t mean to be mean, but this woman was not attractive. She just emanated one of those vibes of not embracing anything good or nice or wholesome. Yet, there she smoked.
 
You know, I guess way back in the way back when, it was cool to smoke. I know a lot of my contemporaries smoked. Smoked, at least until the stopped or died. But, it is anything but that now, here, in this day and age.
 
And, what does it add to the life of anyone?
 
I could just tell she was one of those people unfulfilled, unhappy, and willing to hurt herself and everyone else in the process. She just emulated negative vibes. Why, I’ll never know? Maybe you know some people like that?   
 
So, in I go to get my latte and bagel. She’s out there smoking. I can see her through the glass. When she was done she threw her cigarette to the ground, stomped it out. Just polluting the environment further.
 
Even though I ordered ahead on the app, I had to wait a couple of minutes for them to finish my drink.
 
As I’m waiting, in she comes to sit at a table with her friend. She’s done doing what she’s done doing. But, how did what she was doing affect others? How did it affect me?
 
I remember I had this friend who smoked. When they started putting the message out there about how second-hand smoke is dangerous, he proclaimed he didn’t believe it. But, just because you do or do not believe something, does not make it the truth. All you have to do, like I did this morning, is walk by someone who is smoking, and you breathe in the promised death.
 
Like I always say, the world begins with you. It begins with what you do and who is affected by what you have done.
 
You can do good things. You can make the world a better place. Or, you can smoke. You life, your choice.