Saturday was a summer fun-fest. A friend arrived with marinated chicken at about 2 p.m. That morning I had already reserved one huge gas grill and a picnic table for our group in my condo complex.
Another guest came right on time to help me carry food and supplies down to the picnic area. Others continued to arrive and our group was complete by about 2:20.
We ate, laughed, kibitzed; my guests’ two kids – a boy, 6, and a girl, 11 – shrieked with glee in the nearby pool. We left at about 4:45 p.m. in a small caravan for snooty San Marino, home of “old money” and the former Huntington mansion – now a public museum, the popular Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens – open to all for many years.
Surrounding the Huntington estate grounds are gigantic gardens that contain the world’s largest cacti collection. Please note that nowhere was nicotine use to be found in these proceedings. Nicotine use was absent from our picnic and I’m sure the two children had more fun unhampered by noxious cigarette fumes.
The vast Huntington estate’s immense grounds were covered in a sea of families sprawled in the summer sun on hundreds of color-burst blankets, who weren’t hacking from tobacco smoke nor spewing phlegm upon their neighbors.
Old and young alike climbed the steep stairways throughout the museum, which houses numerous works of art including Gainsborough’s famed Blue Boy. Folks were enjoying themselves without cigarette breaks. The air was clear and so were eyes and noses. This is but one of numerous enjoyable nicotine-free events experienced by yours truly since 1993, at which time I left cigarette land. It is my solid intention to never return to that poison valley of darkness and death.
When waterfalls are shown with smokers smiling in the breeze, I see cigarette land beneath the façade of lies: corpses rotting, the stench of needless untimely demise. Sunny times don’t occur in a cancer ward. Chest choking heart attacks accompanied by nurses attending in crisis mode tend to be accompanied by a medicinal smell; tropical breezes are absent in a crematorium. Why not reach out for life now? Escape from Nicotine Country, get some fresh air!
We ex-smokers are so glad that we made that choice. Please join us, we’re waiting for you. We’re real and you can experience a real life, free from the painful pinch of nicotine, consistently clawing at your health and your well-being.
Read more from Jim:
Why We Need Annoying Ex-Smokers
How to Stay Nicotine-free in the Face of Pain
Freedom from Nicotine: Life on the Other Side of the Fence
Visit me at escapefromnicotinecountry.net and I look forward to being with you again next week.
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