Posted by Paul on 23/1/2012, 6:08 am
76.107.5.152
The girl who cuts my hair, and has for the past five years, is a 32 year old woman, about 5 ft 1'' and curvy, with fair skin and long blonde hair (with the occasional pink or blue streak) who smokes "about a pack and a half a day...or maybe two".
She always smells strongly like a mix of victorias secret perfume and ashtray, typically wears somewhat busty vline sweaters that compliments her curves, along with hip hugging jeans and ballet flats without socks, and she has what I would call a medium grade smokers cough, that I must say is quite nice.
Based on the conversations I've had with her over the past several years, trying to not be too obvious when I'm darksiding on her, she's been smoking since she was 14, and claims that she smokes "a normal amount...like about one and a half pack a day...or maybe two"...to which I gamely replied once with a wry smile "you really mean you basically smoke two packs a day through right?", to which she laughed a little and said "well yeah, but saying I smoke two packs a day sounds excessive to some folks, so I usually just say 'about a pack and a half a day' and that doesn't make me sound like some crazy chainsmoker."
Recently I learned on Facebook that she was going to try to quit smoking for a New Years resolution, after constant requests from her doctor. I called and made an appointment for a haircut at once. I struck up a conversation with her, let it steer towards health and then she told me, rather candidly, that her doctor told her she had to quit smoking or she was going to be at extreme risk of cervical cancer and possibly have a hysterectomy by age 35. She said it was bc she had hpv (apparently from being too sexually active as a teenager) and after a biopsy she'd had recently they found pre-cancerous tissue with her having a "moderate-to-severe" risk, and with her smoking being the number one risk factor, and they immediately recommended a cold cone biopsy to remove the pre-cancerous tissue around her cervix. She was upset when telling me, so I told her my wife (who knows her cousin) had a similar procedure done too and that it would be fine. She says she's scared, Bc the next option is a complete hysterectomy, which she doesnt want to have, bc she's 32 and unmarried and might want to have kids someday.
So she said that even though shed never planned on trying to quit smoking Bc she loved it (also confirmed in previous conversation) she was going to try and quit, and had a "smoking away" party the day after new years, where she openly admitted to "chain-smoking all night, like three and a half packs...it was great".
So, being the deviant Darksider I am, I offered her some "helpful tips" on quitting smoking that "worked for a friend of mine": she should only try to decrease her smoking very gradually, one cigarette less each week, start out smoking the number of cigs she usually smokes in a day and working your way down from there. She asked if that would be about a pack and a half, and I smiled and corrected her that it'd be two packs a day. She blushed slightly and smiled and agreed it should be two packs a day, or forty cigs a day, everyday all week. Then next week shed try to go down to only 39 a day, everyday all week, then 38 the following week and so on. She thought the idea was great.
Then I gave her my second "extra helpful tip", that she really needed to not count cigarettes weekends, holidays or vacations to give herself a break. That the only days that counted were "weekdays" of Monday thru Thursday, Bc she had to give herself some breathing room and downtime where she could smoke as much as she wanted. I said it was like people who take a break from dieting on the weekends. She loved the idea and asked about what if she goes out on a Thursday night, like she often does, and I said that wouldn't count, so Thursday day she had to keep it to only two packs, but once she got off work and was getting ready to go out, it didn't count. She seemed confused, so I just said "take a break from counting cigs on Thursday night" and she said that sounded good. Then she mentioned that barbers and hairdressers dont work mondays, and so i told her that she could count mondays as a smoking holiday too, which she was glad to hear. I told her my "friend" swore that this worked, always allowing yourself smoke breaks on "weekends and holidays", even after someone has officially "quit".
I also noted that the last half pack a day was the hardest to cut back, and that she might need extra time like two weeks or so for each extra she tried to cut. She said it sounded like it took all year, and I told her it did, but that was what worked. Plus I said if she ever "fell off the wagon" and had a stressful day, and say went from thirty cigs to forty cigs, she could always just start fresh from the new higher number, like forty, and try again next time, which was an idea she also liked alot.
She said this sounded like the best quit smoking plan shed ever heard of, and that the nicotine gum would never work, Bc onetime severAl years ago shed tried to quit smoking for lent and tries the gum, but got addicted to their new mint flavor nicotine gum, and it's still her favorite gum. I told her it was fine to keep chewing the gum if she liked it and not to be too hard on herself about trying to quit smoking, and that if it didn't work this year, she could always try next year, or the year after, or whenever she felt up to it, which seemed to make her feel better.
That was 3 weeks ago. Just yesterday I saw fb pics of her out at a bar patio, cigarette in hand. A friend of hers commented "I thought you were quitting", and she said "I was, but I couldn't take it and gave in. Maybe next year."
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