Smoking and playing

[tbn.al]

I smoked for 25 years. The very day I smoked my first cigarette, I smoked a whole pack. I fianally got up to 3 packs a day. You have to get two going at once most days to do that. My father was a chain smoker who quit when I was 18. His second had smoke had primed me for the trip. I started the next year, because it was the cool thing to do at school. Both my children were athsmatic, not because of second hand smoke because after my experience with my dad I never smoked in the house, car or around them, but because of the chemicals I had on my clothes. I had a serious come to Jesus meeting in 1993, threw down the cigarettes and have never smoked another one. I had quit hundreds of times before, but this time was different. I finally was made to understand the gravity of the situation. I can only say that God is good and if you pay attention He will show you the way.
I am convinced of several things now:
1. Playing a brass instrument has probably kept my lungs in good enough condition to fight off any cancer that might be lurking. That's from my Doctor.
2. My lung capacity has declined over the years, some from age but mostly from smoking.
3. When you are 20, you won't notice that it hurts your playing. Totaly different story when you are 50.
4. You will die some day. You can't avoid it. You can avoid the pain and suffering an untimely death from lung cancer will cause you and your family.
5. Try to think of one absolutely good and pure thing that results from smoking, please. You can't.

[Chuck(G)]

You know, I lost my dad about 25 years ago a day short of his 70th birthday. While I've kept some special memories of him alive in my mind, I will never forget his last months of life. What was a big, robust human being was turned into a moaning (even when he was unconscious) shadown of a human being whom the doctors and cancer had mercilessly whittled away.

Stop it--if not for yourself, stop it out of consideration for the people who will survive you.

[LoyalTubist]

In my last band I played with in the Army, I was the low man on the totem pole. While I used my own tubas to play with the band, I also used the equipment the Army issued me. Whenever the band bought something new, there was a big rotation: The Field First Sergeant, a tuba player, would have everything he didn't like issued to me. He liked small bore tubas that would blast by blowing almost no air into them while I liked huge bore monsters....

And he was a smoker, who would actually smoke while he was playing....

I inherited one of his sousaphones to play for marching. When I got it, the tuba was filthy. I took it home and, on a three-day weekend, soaked it in my bathtub. I would have to continually fill up the tub with warm water and drain it. The substance that came out of the horn resembled Hershey's chocolate syrup! It was tobacco. I had to soak that thing at least ten times, using lots of Dawn dish detergent, before I was happy with how clean it was.

Then, because it was silver, I polished the bell. It looked really nice when I took it to work on that Tuesday....

When we played in a pass-in-review that week, the Field First commented how nice the sound was that came out of his old sousaphone. He said he could never make it sound the way I did.

"Well, Sarge," I replied, "I guess I'm a better player than you!"

He nodded.

[bearphonium]

Like Chuck G, I lost my Dad to smoking related cancer 20 years ago this Christmas, and like Chuck, watched a healthy robust man waste away to nothing. He died at age 71 after a lifetime of smoking, the youngest death age of anyone in his family. Mom died three years ago Easter, of emphsemia, following a lifetime of smoking.

It tears me up to see people, especially kids, smoking. IMO, you don't look cool, you look like a dork with a burning thingiy hanging out of your mouth. Don't get me started on what I think of a cigar!

[LoyalTubist]

I never had the mentality of a smoker. I smoked when I was 19. It wasn't a habit, it was a boredom killer for me. I started with cigarettes. When I didn't like the taste of them I switched to cigars. They got to be expensive and girls didn't like them to much, so I stopped.

The odor of tobacco makes me physically ill. Despite having chronic bronchitis, which leaves me with a stuffed up nose all year, I have a very keen sense of smell. Sometimes I wish it weren't so.

My wife (a non-smoker) lived with her father, a heavy smoker, until she was 29, then she came to live with me. She can't understand why I don't want anyone to smoke near any opening of our high rise apartment--she can't smell tobacco. She lets him smoke on the balcony. If he asks me (and he would, if I spoke Vietnamese and he spoke English), I would tell him to take the elevator down to the ground floor, walk to the street and smoke there, not near the door to the building. My wife says that doesn't show her father (who is younger than I am) the respect he deserves (and yes, I look many years younger than he does!)