RRN Online Volume 303

March 23 '02

Volume 303

Smoker's Rights Think About It

March 12, 2002, Journal Entry: I've Non Smoking Area

just finished eating a meal at the Waffle House across the street from my motel room in Hattiesburg. Very interesting people eat at Waffle House restaurants, and sometimes, when I look around at the clientele, I ask myself, "What am I doing here?" A guy wearing business casual is not the norm at most Waffle House's I've visited. I certainly don't view myself as better than the "interesting" folks, but I don't blend in very well, either.

Some of the scraggliest looking folks you could ever hope to find can be spotted in a Waffle House. On a beauty scale of 1 to 10 for females, with 10 being most beautiful, I've yet to see a "7" at a Waffle House, and most are in the three to five range. I like the food at Waffle House, but I'm as apt to go there to watch people as to eat. Tonight, two diminutive old men intrigued me. The first one ordered something out of the ordinary. Aside from a bowl of chili and a glass of water, he requested a non-menu item, namely a sandwich of lettuce, tomato, and onion on wheat bread. Both old men appeared to be in their seventies, and each one ate alone, like me. I could only see the facial profile of the one eating the onion sandwich, but the other man may have been younger than seventy. If so, his face was the product of sixty-plus years of having lived a hard life, or it could have been the use of tobacco that gave him a dried and smoked look.

Most Waffle House restaurants don't have a no smoking section, but I find one occasionally that does. The small buildings do not have very large seating areas, so it's hard to separate non-smokers from smokers with enough space between them so the non-smokers aren't subjected to second-hand smoke. I don't like to eat near someone smoking, but I can and do tolerate it. More often than not, I catch a whiff of smoke at some point during my Waffle House meal and consider it par for the course.

For years, we've known about the health risks facing smokers. We know it's not healthy for an expectant mother to smoke, as not only does she do herself harm, but harm is done to the child within her womb as well. We also know that second-hand smoke in sufficient quantities can damage the health of a non-smoker. We have sued tobacco companies and won big settlements. We have instituted expensive no smoking campaigns aimed at encouraging persons to stop smoking and discouraging others from starting to smoke. We've approved the Surgeon General's warning on all packs of cigarettes and have sought to limit cigarette advertising. We've forced supermarkets to make tobacco products all but inaccessible to a grocery shopper. We have and will continue to put the law on someone for selling cigarettes to minors. We've taxed and super taxed tobacco products. In spite of our best efforts at reducing the number of smokers, little progress has been made.

I used to think if cigarettes were twenty dollars a carton, folks would stop buying them. Now, I think they'd pay a hundred dollars a carton, though they might have to cut back on daily consumption. The trouble with overtaxing tobacco is that children of smokers might have less food on the table if tobacco taxes were much more expensive. Persons addicted to anything that costs money will do whatever it takes to support their habit, even taking food from their families by spending their money on smokes.

What with taxation, health risks, and the like, smokers have it bad enough. Should we make it worse for them by preventing them from smoking in public buildings? Do we not realize that in separating smokers from non-smokers in a restaurant we are labeling them possibly as undesirables? When we single out a group who pose a health risk to others and treat them differently because they pose such a risk, is that not discriminatory? Does all that not seem a bit un-American?

Smokers are addicts, but so are alcoholics. Yet, we don't ask alcoholics to sit apart from non-drinkers. Smokers are risking their health, but so are gay men and promiscuous heterosexuals. In restaurants, do we separate gay men from straight men or the sexually active from the chaste? Smokers are a minority group, and so are Blacks. We no longer ask Blacks to sit in the back of the bus, drink from a "colored only" water fountain, or refuse to serve them in a restaurant, yet we discriminate against smokers. Women seeking abortions plead their case on the basis of "a woman's right to choose," but for the most part such women are not addicted to sex. Smokers have the right of choosing to stop smoking, but they are hindered by nicotine addiction.

Most major corporations and governmental agencies have banned smoking in the workplace. Workers are forced to smoke outside the building where they are employed, and in the case of some public schools, employees may only smoke off the campus. Once upon a time, smokers were provided designated smoking areas, but these are now practically nonexistent. Instead of a smoking room inside a hospital, regardless the weather visitors who choose to smoke have to "light up" outside one of the entrances.

With respect to toleration, freedom, and individual rights, smokers have lost a lot of ground over the past thirty years, ground that was lost to the intolerance of others who felt their personal freedom was being infringed and individual rights violated. Non smokers were once victims of inconsiderate smokers. Now they are the ones being inconsiderate. Is there a middle ground, or a happy medium?

Lest we forget, smokers are people, and some of them eat at Waffle House restaurants. People deserve to be respected and have their rights protected, even smokers. I think it's time to reconsider the restraints we've placed upon a suffering minority living among us. Maybe, it's time for the pendulum of change to swing part of the way back.

After writing the above: As I walked toward the lobby of the motel to turn in my "room key," the desk clerk was taking a smoke break outside the building. I could not resist commenting on her habit and remarked I had just the night before penned a few thoughts on how the public may have reached the point of overreacting in discriminating against smokers. She agreed, and felt it had happened a few years earlier.

"I never smoked until I was thirty-six." she stated. "I've tried to quit several times, and I even went to one of those seminars where they use hypnosis. It didn't help. The patches haven't helped either."

I could have listened longer except I had to meet my boss in a nearby motel and didn't have much time to spare in discussing the evils of smoking and the actions of those of us who disapprove of persons smoking.

Later that same day, I was prompted to wonder why I had any remorse for the treatment of smokers. It happened as I followed two different drivers miles apart, at different times of the day, and watched as each one nonchalantly tossed a cigarette butt out the window with no apparent thought of littering that my remorse faded almost as quickly as their smoke vanished. Smokers who think of the world as a giant ashtray or "butt can" need more help than I can offer them, and while they may need my sympathy for the habit that enslaves them or my support to help free them from the near tyrannical oppression they face daily, I'd be more prone to either, if they didn't choose to spoil "my world" with their waste products.

However, I think there is a chance that awareness may influence their butt tossing habit. In time we may see smokers as people who don't necessarily deserve the treatment bestowed upon them by our civilized and somewhat selfish society.

Wuss Ball Play With Imagination

Games people play include, baseball, softball, basketball, football, eight ball, pinball, paddleball, racquetball, stickball, and volleyball. Most sports have names peculiar to that sport, with baseball claiming an abundance of "ball" words, fly ball, fastball, foul ball, curve ball, ground ball, knuckle ball, forkball, fair ball, screwball, spitball, sinkerball, passed ball, bean ball, and play ball. Basketball claims for itself jump ball and air ball. In billiards, "eight ball" specialists speak of the object ball and the cue ball.

Kids still play a game named dodge ball. The rules are simple and remain pretty much today the same as they were fifty years ago; if you get hit while trying to dodge the ball, you lose. Yet, leave it to adults to mess up a kid's game.

More and more physical education instructors in public schools are banning dodge ball. They reason it's a competitive sport with winners and losers (obviously our brightest and best students are becoming Phys Ed instructors). These well-meaning individuals feel that children should not be subjected to exercise activities that might possibly lower ones self-esteem. Never mind that generations of us have played dodge ball, survived bouts of low self-esteem, and went on to become competent and caring adults, there's a new breed of instructors who want no part of competitive skills in their exercise programs. Instead of dodge ball they promote wuss ball, where wuss is slang for a male wimp and a ball is not even used.

Yeah, it's a little crazy, but it's happening, and the same people advocating wuss ball would have children jumping rope without using a rope. I'm not making this up. There was a TV News program devoted to this last week. Nobody fails Phys Ed, and the movement is sweeping the country.

I don't have a problem with exercise programs in schools that incorporate aerobic exercises. After all, there's a world of weight-loss videos that help folks shed pounds and firm up muscles using aerobics. The problem I see is with adults "protecting" children from a part of childhood in which they can learn not only athletic skills, but coping skills as well. Children who grow up in an adult-protected environment will be in for quite a shock upon graduation into the real world. They will need a lot more than physical stamina to get by in a world driven by competition in the workplace. Toss them in the streets of cities and they'll be as helpless as sheep surrounded by a pack of wolves.

Unless parents become involved in choosing the direction of the Physical Education curricula in public and private schools, we may soon see America's first generation of wusses. Watch for wuss ball, coming soon to a school near you.

Afghan Girl Modern Mona Lisa

I saw her face on the cover of National Geographic in June of '85. I would have guessed her to be around fifteen to seventeen years of age, and with no other physical characteristics for comparison I thought it a reasonable guess. A photographer, working for the National Geographic Society, on a story about the Soviet/ Afghan war had photographed her in a refugee camp inside the Pakistan border.

National Geographic is a magazine that boasts some of the finest photographs of any magazine in the world. For the photographer, Steve McCurry, the face of the young girl epitomized the struggle of the Afghan people against the Soviet Union.

I can't speak for everyone, but for me, her most compelling feature was her eyes. Framed so that she looked directly into the camera, her large green eyes seemed to pierce mine. Though youthful, there was a hint of ruggedness in her face, a look of determination borne out of the hardships she surely must have faced having fled her homeland. Hers was a natural beauty, but I could easily imagine her on the cover of a glamour or fashion magazine had she been discovered in America.

The next time I saw her face was when National Geographic editors compiled a book containing the 100 best photographs that had been published by the society. Again, she made the cover, and I was once again, captivated by her picture.

The photographer had numerous request over the next fifteen or so years for more information on his now famous picture. Hearing that the refugee camp where he had made her picture was scheduled for demolition to make room for a housing project, he hurried off toward the Pakistani/ Afghan border in hopes of learning the fate of the young girl made famous by a photograph.

Assisted by others and with an uncanny amount of good fortune and good luck, the folks from National Geographic found her. She does not know her exact age (27 to 29) and may have wed, by an arranged marriage, as early as age thirteen. She and her husband have three daughters. A fourth daughter did not survive infancy.

Thanks to National Geographic and the small miracle of finding her, the young woman has been identified. Her name is Sharbat Gula which in the Pashto language of the Pashtun people means sweetwater flower girl. Read more about her escape from Afghanistan, her marriage, and of being rediscovered, all in the April Issue of National Geographic.

Bodock Beau A Practical Philosophy

To eat or not to eat, that is the question. Yes, we have to eat to live, and therein lies the problem. How much is too much? What are healthy choices? One does not have to look farther than the local bookstore to find plenty of answers, but before going there, try practicing the following:

A Practical Philosophy of Life

Q: I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?

A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it, don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?

A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable slop.

Q: Is beer or wine bad for me?

A: Look, it goes to the earlier point about fruits and vegetables. As we all know, scientists divide everything in the world into three categories: animal, mineral, and vegetable. We all know that beer and wine are not animal, and they are not on the periodic table of elements, so that only leaves one thing, right? My advice: Have a burger and a beer and enjoy your liquid vegetables.

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

A: Well, if you have a body, and you have body fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?

A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain - Good.

Q: If I stop smoking, will I live longer?

A: Nope. Smoking is a sign of individual expression and peace of mind. If you stop, you'll probably stress yourself to death in record time.

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?

A: You're not listening. Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: What's the secret to healthy eating?

A: Thicker gravy.

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?

A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach. I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had.

Submitted by Bing Crausby

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