I did not intend for these stories to connect to one another or create a thread of any kind. But as I was thinking about the poker story I remembered the cigarettes.
One of the poker players left a full pack of filterless cigarettes on the kitchen table. I came home from school that afternoon to the full ashtrays, and half empty beer cans and I saw the pack of cigarettes. I pocketed them, and hid them for the remainder of the week until Saturday when my friend Jackie Consiglio and I set off to the woods to smoke. Neither of us had ever smoked before, I was only ten years old.
Jackie and I hiked down to Lake Monona, crossed the swampy creek to the path that winds around the lake to our spot (probably the spot of every kid in the complex), and started smoking. We smoked the entire pack, one after the other after the other. I wonder now, did we think that was how cigarettes were smoked or were we just children from large families who were in the habit of gobbling everything up until there was nothing left? Jackie's father was a chain smoker, so maybe that's where we got the idea that cigarettes were supposed to be devoured.
We must have poisoned ourselves because I recall the walk home; Jackie was white as a sheet, and my own little body was wracked with nausea. What was wrong with me that I wasn't able to handle smoking a few cigarettes, I wondered? Cool kids smoked. I was determined to overcome the sickness, and by the time I was eleven I had a preferred brand: Kool.
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