Help kids by enforcing existing anti-smoking laws

(The flu kicked my butt last week. I got a seasonal flu shot on Sept. 17 and two days later I was sneezing, had a runny nose, aches and pains, watery eyes, all the good flu symptoms. My breathing became more labored, too, which frustrated me it had improved over the past few weeks. It appears that the worse is over, though, but, yes, Rolan, I am going to the doctor anyway. I promised. Not sure I want that HINI swine flu vaccine, not after how seasonal flu shot made me feel.

On a positive note, Sunday I fit into a pair of shorts that that were too tight to wear just two months ago. The triple h's - hazy, hot and humid - were in effect Sunday so I wore them out. I would have worn them if it had snowed. Celebrating weight lose trumps seasonal fashion. And now, the column...)

First off, if you smoke or are considering smoking after being exposed to all the evidence about the dangers of tobacco and nicotine, you are a fool. A drug-addicted fool, but a fool no less.

I am a reformed fool. I smoked for more than 20 years and quit only after sarcoidosis look hold of my lungs and heart. The desire to smoke was strong. I started smoking again shortly after a 10-day hospital stay for shortness of breath, chest pains and other symptoms of the autoimmune disease. Now, it has been almost three months since my last cigarette.

I could feel my body telling me that it was time – past time – to stop, and with the help of a little, blue pill…No, the other little, blue pill. Get your mind out of the gutter…I was able to stop. I liked smoking and I am sure that the nicotine implored me to continuing puffing away even though evidence was mounting that something was wrong. I will continue to fight the urge to smoke and take solace in the fact that my lungs are improving. However, they are nowhere near as good as they were before sarc. I just know it would be foolish to slip back into that nasty old habit, so I won't.

While I agree cigarettes are terrible, I am against the new law banning the importation of flavored cigarettes. We already have laws on the books that, when properly enforced, keep cigarettes out of the hands of kids.

(My buddy's favorite smokes) I am writing in support of a friend of mine who loves imported clove cigarettes. I would smoke them with him on breaks at the New Haven Register. I preferred Marlboros or Camels. These cloves were too rough. When I inhaled one, it felt like a hole was being burned through my throat. They were tasty, though, like an exotic fruit. An exotic fruit that can burn a hole through your throat.

(Children are better off if we feed them the toys that come with the kids' ''meals") If we want to pass laws protecting kids, let's ban kids' meals from fast food restaurants, commercial aimed at getting kids to crave fatty, salty, sugary foods and drinks, and cap the number of hours kids can watch TV or play video games.

The news media got excited about kids setting records for playing the video game Guitar Heroes. Video games are fun, but kids are wasting time on games when they could be outside getting exercise or doing something that might spark imagination and innovation, like spending hours actually learning how to play a real musical instrument. Something. Anything but being a lump on sofa pretending to be a guitar hero.

I just imagine a generation inspired to do their best to mimic the work of the world's best musicians instead of aspiring to create original great music themselves. And I imagine the contestants preparing for battle by crackling their knuckles, sitting on their flat, ever-widening asses and pouring and shoving massive amounts of soda, French fries and who-knows-what-else down their throats.

Consider banning fruit-flavor spirits and malt liquor. Very few wine coolers have actual wine in them, honey. It's a good bet the key ingredient is malt liquor, the swill that down-and-out men used to hide in paper bags and chug while leaning in street lamps to steady themselves. The manufacturers wanted to move more of it so they camouflaged the taste and drab brown look in sweeteners and food coloring, prettied up the packaging so it would be cool for young people, especially young women, and ta-da! Drink up, just careful not to crash your car and mindful of whom you might wake up with after a fruity-tasting bender.

(Ladies and gentlemen, our new Guitar Hero champion! Whoa!) My friend is an adult, a taxpayer and should be free to consume whatever he wants in the privacy of his own home as long as he is not harming anyone, and he is not. I wish I could wrap up this column up by writing that I want my buddy in Connecticut to quit smoking because I want him to be healthy for years to come. However, he and some other smokers I know puff away with nary a hint of respiratory problems. Their luck might one day be steamrolled by science, but they are fine right now. More power to them.

Perhaps it was all those years of exercising and playing in the sunshine during the good old days before video games became popular.

Hey, pale fat kid, drop the remote, get outside and play!

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'Suffering' to wellness

(''Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it’. – Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

John Hughes was one of my favorite storytellers. My favorite Hugh’s film is Ferris Buerller’s Day Off. Hughes dies of sudden cardiac arrest last week while out on his daily walk. He was 59. Hughes probably never saw it coming. The problem with sudden cardiac death is that half of the time the first symptom is a heart attack. Stay on top of your health. See your doc and ask about risk factors and tests to determine whether you are risk. And rest in peace, John.)

This one goes out to one that I love, my uncle Art. I am writing this on Saturday morning after learning he is back the hospital. He has been intubated. He cannot breathe on his own.

Long story short, Art has COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Things are not looking good for him. He is on more than a dozen medications, has oxygen tanks and inhalers all over the house.

And he still smokes.

The nicotine in cigarettes is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. And in some people, the river of addiction runs deep.

My river flows deep. I smoked for 20 years knowing that cigarettes kill. I belong to the first generation to learn about the dangers of smoking in grade school. When my brother Todd and I attended Nicholas Murray Butler High School in Elizabeth, N.J., we attended an assembly at which a guest speaker told us about the dangers of smoking and nicotine and the horrors of living with respiratory disease.

We stared in horror at a pickled cancerous lung in a jar (That was disgusting and too much for kids. And whose lung was that anyway?).

When school let out, we ran home, cut up our mom’s cigarettes and flush them down the toilet. I imagine that she wanted to beat the hell out of us for doing that, and who could blame her? Those freaking cigarettes did not grown on trees. And this was in the 70s, the era before people thought anything and everything was child abuse, so there were no calls to the Department of Child of Family Services. In the ‘70s, if my brother and I had called DCFS, a Paul Mall-addicted social worker would have showed up at the door and would have said, “Those damn kids did what? I’ll help ya bury them!”

Anyway…addiction…I want a smoke right now and I am fighting lung and heart sarcoidosis (unfortunately, I cannot go to the hospital to visit Art because the key drugs treating my sarcoid, prednisone and methotrexate, also suppress my immune system leaving me especially vulnerable to all the nastiness lurking invisible in the air of medical units). Breathing can be a chore. I cannot remember the days when I did not think about breathing. I think I have to go back to spring 2006.

And still, I want a cigarette.

The last time I saw Uncle Art, he was smoking. He sneaks out of the house buys a pack of cigs and smokes in his car or on his terrace. My Aunt Lorraine knows, but what can she do? Addiction is overwhelming and the addicted are impossible to help unless they want to help themselves. Success rates for intervention – I do not give a damn how easy things wrap up on TV talk shows – are bad.

The only way to overcome addiction is suffering through it and knowing that the craving, sometimes very strong, will be with you for the rest of your life. I am taking Chantix to take the edge off my craving, but I still think about smoking every day. Sometimes it is overwhelming. For example, the more I write on this subject the more I want a Malboro(my brand, but I'll smoke anything).

However, I know that one more smoke is one more nail in my coffin and I refuse to go out that way. I am not carrying around a damned oxygen tank in the future I visualize for myself. I am lighter, stronger and kick boxing in the future I visualize for myself. So I suffer through the craving, the feeling of a little, hairy, foul-smelling personal demon impatiently tapping me on the shoulder, demanding I give in.

And I am praying and rooting for my Uncle Art and Aunt Lorraine.

'Quest for a lid' update

I now realize that my major malfunction was my inability or unwillingness to try on clothes. I hate shopping for clothes. I do not necessarily hate hats. I hated hats because I could not find one that fits. I could not find one that fits because I was in too much of a rush to try them on. I am changing my MO. I’ll take a moment to see if the stuff fits, which means I won’t be frustrated later when I get it home.

Now I have four new hats. All of them fit. If I do not lose them, I will be ready for next spring and summer.