My personal Story - 11-13 years (Part Two)

Thought it about time I carried on with the second part of "My Personal Story". This is something I started writing about 6 weeks ago, so if anybody is new here and wants to catch up with reading the first part first you can do so by clicking here.....The start Of My Personal Story (Part One). The first part of my story covered my preteen years, here we will move forward into my teens, and tell how I got hooked at thirteen.

11-13 Years:

Yup.....11 !! That's how old I was when I put that first cigarette into my mouth, 11 !!.I am now 40 years old, and I can still remember that day as if it were yesterday, I could still even go and stand on the very spot that I stood in all those years ago, the memory is that vivid. We were at primary school, and in those days to get out of lessons we used to ask the headmaster if there were any "jobs" that needed doing, very often there were, and these often ranged from getting out/putting away P.e equipment to posting a letter for him at the local postbox........there was nearly always something. I cant actually remember what errand we were running on this particular day, but myself and this other lad (who I shall call TB) were halfway across the playing field, when he suddenly gets out this packet of ten Lambert and Butler, and says here have one of these. TB was a cool kid, and not to look uncool I stupidly took one, trying to look hard and be tough just like him......I didn't look to tough for the next 20 minutes whilst I was coughing my guts up I can tell you!!.....How on earth could anybody enjoy smoking?? it was just so gross it is almost indescribable.......I'll never forget what TB said to me once I stopped coughing, "everyone does that, but don't worry you'll soon get used to it".......and he was right, I, just like millions of others who coughed their stomachs up did get used to it.

From that day on, on and off, I would smoke, but I wasn't a smoker, I wasn't hooked, it would only be the odd one here and there in front of my mates, trying to fit in with the crowd......looking "tough" (stupid). I never bought any, we use to get them off the older kids. This went on for about a year, one every now and then turned into one everyday, which turned into 5 a day, which in turn turned into buying my own (as well as smoking as many of the older kids cigarettes as I could). I was now 13 and hooked on nicotine....sad but true, I was now a fully fledged smoker. The price of cigarettes back then, and we are now talking 1983, was something like .79p for 20 and about .40p for 10, and what are they now? somewhere around the £6.00 mark i think for 20.

Right from the start I was aware of the "smell" and did all sorts of things to try and disguise this when I got home. I didn't want my parents to know I was smoking at that age (oh how little did i know). I used to walk out through my back garden, over the heathland, into the next village where all my mates were. At the top of my garden I had hidden in the bushes, a bottle of vinegar and a can of fragranced aerosol, so when I used to return home from being out and about with my mates, I used to get to the top of the garden where I used to spray myself with this aerosol and "gargle" with the vinegar, before going indoors.
It wasn't until I was about 15 when my parents knew for definite that I smoked, but now being an adult myself, I bet they knew quite sometime before that :)

Will carry on this story over the next few weeks
Regards

Vattie

(now a non smoker for over 3 months)