The Smokers house. Growing up in one.
Posted by Dry_Ad7529@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 261 comments
Seems odd now, no? I had a dream that inspired this stream of conscience. I grew up in a smokers house, both parents smoked (a lot). Smoked in the car, the bathroom, in bed etc. I never felt too weird. Obviously I started smoking in my teens and my parents didn’t frown on it after i was 18. (I quit on my 30th birthday). Everything smelled, everything was nicotine stained. I remember visiting their house after i quit and it was astonishing how quickly the smell took over. This seemed commonplace (to me) in the 80s. My parents had non smoking friends and they had to go over to my parents house for game nights bc of smoking ? My dad had a huge glass ashtray in his office (he was in the air force).
Not really a point here, just something that struck me.
Vegetable-Maize-4034@reddit
Both of my parents smoked, too. I started smoking around 15 and smoked on and off until I was 28 and got pregnant with my son. Have never looked back. The smell definitely permeates everything. Cleaned out my dad’s house after he died and wow. Any furniture I kept had to be aired out, textiles washed multiple times. There was a nicotine veneer on all of it. Super gross. When I think about my childhood now, I think of how my teachers could clearly smell me. There were definitely teachers that smoked, and some even on school grounds, but for those who didn’t I must’ve STUNK. How embarrassing. And all of my friends who went home after spending time at my house would have stunk too. Just so gross. I’m so fortunate I was able to quit when I did as smoking killed my mom at 53 and was definitely responsible in part to my dad’s declining health in his later years.
EttaJamesKitty@reddit
I didn't have many friends from non-smoking homes growing up, but I had a few (including my first boyfriend). I wonder if they hated how they smelled after being at my home. Or did they not notice b/c smoking was everywhere? We even had a smoking section in high school for students and teachers.
JuJu_Wirehead@reddit
I smoked from 15 to 31. My car would reek, my apartments would reek. I never noticed till I quit and one of my friends got in my car and the smell of cigarette smoke on him was overwhelming. I told him he stunk, he told me that's how I used to smell for years. All these years later I don't like the smell of smoker's houses or cars, but I occasionally get a whiff of cigarette smoke and a little part of me misses it still
EmergencyWide5583@reddit
Same…I can’t believe looking back how common it was. My dad…in the house, car, bathroom..everywhere! Then ya I ended up a smoker till about 23yo. After seeing my dad die of lung cancer in his early 50’s was all I needed to stop. It’s crazy though to think back how much it was out there…like way back (mid-80’s ish) I feel like I remember taking a flight to Florida and smoking was still allowed on it. Could you imagine?!?
EttaJamesKitty@reddit
I never smoked b/c I hated my parents doing it soooooo much. I'm 54 years old and I HATE the smell of cigarettes.
I used to get lots of upper respiratory infections, esp in winter. I remember being at the doctor when I was like 7 or 8 and him telling my parents that maybe....just maybe...I was getting URIs all the time b/c of their smoking, and they may want to cut back or smoke outside. Y'no...do something about their behavior to help my health. OMG the laughs from my parents. My dad was like "its not our smoking...we just got a defective kid".
I've struggled with deep breathing my whole life. I recall being in a yoga class and the teacher having us do belly breaths. I couldn't do it. She came over, hand on my belly, my hand on her belly, showing me how, the whole thing - couldn't do it.
Maybe my breathing issues are genetic. Or maybe they were caused by ingesting smoke in the womb and for the following 18 years of my life. Who knows.
Tsimps2362@reddit
Omg I could have written this! The doctor used to say the same thing to my mom about smoking around me when I was sick. I had constant bronchitis and other infections. I've hardly been sick a day since moving out at 18. I'm 45 now..
Weird-Girl-675@reddit
My dad smoked - my parents split when I was young so I only saw him every other weekend and in the summer. He thought it was funny to blow smoke in my face and I’d have to air out my suitcase when I came home. Now I have a serious lung condition and struggle a lot. I also worked in sports bars in the late 90s.
What’s interesting, is when I talk to my young coworkers they can’t believe there was ever a time that you could smoke in a restaurant.
Looking-Ahead55@reddit
Both parents smoked. Father was Camels, mom was Merit Ultra Lights. My mom used to send me to the store all the time to get her a pack; I was around 10 years old. We had those thick glass ashtrays all around the house. One of my chores was cleaning them out. I remember vividly going to the diner and having to sit in the smoking section and being annoyed about it. I now have a condition (unrelated) that makes my sense of smell similar to that of a bloodhound, so now just the smell of it walking down the street makes me feel physically ill.
ka_beene@reddit
I'm similar. My sense of smell works very well. For me I think it has to do with exposure over time. My body cannot handle being around cigarettes or heavy perfume anymore. It gives me bad headaches and my nose stuffs up. Growing up my mom smoked and wore heavy perfume. That shit is bad for you! My brother's also have similar reactions around artificial scents.
Looking-Ahead55@reddit
Same with the heavy perfume and cologne smells. My nose is very accusatory in thinking everyone poured a whole bottle of their preferred scents on before leaving the house. On the flip side, my cat accidentally turned on the gas on my stove and I was able to smell it from a few rooms away while my family who was closer to the kitchen had no idea. So it does come in handy sometimes.
LiveProtection830@reddit
Mama’s Virginia Slims. Ugh.
chriskbrown50@reddit
Everyone smoked in my family. It was everywhere. You did not think about it as it was what you knew.
hammie123456@reddit
How about the smoking section of an airplane?! That was wild when you think about it.
LiveProtection830@reddit
My first flight in 96 had smokers right behind me.
bene_gesserit_mitch@reddit
That was every section.
Ok_Kick6546@reddit
My father quit when I was 13 or so but my mother kept smoking until her 70s. The house reeked, as did my clothes, but I was nose blind to it. Almost all the adults I knew were smokers. I’m very thankful that I never smoked, especially after seeing how many of my classmates had developed COPD at our 30th HS reunion.
Buttercreamdeath@reddit
My mom refused to stop smoking even when she had her own oxygen tank. She caught herself and the carpet leading to the tank on fire. Thankfully put it out before it got to the tank.
I was mad when I found out she was smoking while hooked up to a tank. She lived in an apartment building. She was just going to casually blow up her neighbors to keep smoking. I confronted her about it and she just took a drag of her cigarette and said, "don't care. I'll be dead."
She thankfully died before that came to pass. She really was so selfish like that her whole life.
Ok_Kick6546@reddit
My mother was an asshole about most things other than blowing up the house. And people wonder why Generation X has zero fucks to give. 🙄
pearlgirl10@reddit
Mom and dad smoked a lot. In the cars, house, restaurants. My aunts and uncles, the same, my granddad smoked until he was well in his 70s. My dad still smokes in his house and when I go to visit him I wear the oldest clothes I have and need to wash them and me right away when I get home. My car even smells after the long drive home. I smoked for 3 days in my 20s and my ex smoked 17 of the 18 year we were together. I want to vomit when ever I smell coworkers come in from smoke breaks.
2ndhandroses@reddit
Both parents were chain smokers and I know that my mum smoked when she was pregnant with me. It could be the reason why I was born 5 weeks early. Neither myself nor my brother picked up the habit fortunately. My mum died of advanced COPD. She started when she was 17 and only stopped once she was in hospital as by then they didn’t permit that. It was horrible to experience that.
seaburno@reddit
Recently, my wife and I went to a garage/estate sale in our neighborhood. There was a lot of great stuff out in the driveway at reasonable prices.
We picked up a book that we were interested in and opened it up to see its condition. It stunk SO bad of cigarette smoke that both of us gagged. Then we realized that everything stunk of cigarette smoke. We noped out of there fast.
248Spacebucks@reddit
We went to an open house where the entire front room had a built in wood paneled pub with bar. They had obvs spent every moment of their lives smoking in that room. The smoke smell literally punched you in the face upon entering. It felt and smelled like the Cigarette Smoking Man was lurking in every corner. We didnt even get upstairs before I had to leave.
Ceciltheseamonster@reddit
My mother started smoking when she was 14. She smoked sitting next to us in the house, she smoked in the car with the windows up. She smoked on the way to the doctors for my sister and I’s allergy and asthma treatments. She still smokes and she tells me her lung health results are better than mine. A long time friend of hers confirmed for me that my mother lied about smoking during pregnancy and smoked all through both. I am so much healthier not living with her, but my lungs still don’t work right. I set a hard rule she wasn’t allowed to smoke around my kids even if they were at her house.
Very few of my friends parents smoked growing up, my Dad never has.
Ahleanna-D@reddit
Same. They used to smoke in the car with the windows just barely cracked as well. Ended up starting smoking myself at 15, and finally quit in 2014, replacing it with vaping.
Went for tests at the hospital yesterday after a separate fainting incident resulting in my being taken to A&E (where they saw cloudiness on a chest x-ray) and yesterday’s CT scan showed that there’s a tumour in my left lung, so… we’ll see how that pans out.
The timing on this post!
FriendRaven1@reddit
Good luck my reddit friend
Astronaut6735@reddit
Stream of ~conscience~ consciousness. 👍
Existing-Leopard-212@reddit
Two smoking parents and terrible childhood asthma. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.
Both passed in 2005 from cancer.
Dumbkitty2@reddit
Didn’t develop the asthma until I was nearly out of the house. Been on fancy inhaler for over 20 years and just started a $25,000+/month biologic just to hold back the damage.
Thanks fam!
Lasersheep@reddit
I think one of the reasons our generations kids seemed to be more like to take up cigarettes after getting addicted to nicotine via vaping, is because it was rarer for us to smoke, so they don’t know the downsides.
My mum was once hypnotised at a show to stop smoking. Took her a month and a lot of effort to override that and smoke again! Dad has heart issues from 50 till he passed at 77.
Ashby238@reddit
My dad used to smoke in the chevette with the window cracked. He was a chain smoker until my mom turned out to actually be allergic to something in the cigarettes.
I still remember me sitting on brother’s lap with no seat belt and my baby sister in a hanging basinette in the back.
ImmediateBug2@reddit
My parents and almost all of my adult relatives smoked when I was young, and everyone’s house stank. My mom died of COPD a few years because of her lifelong smoking. Luckily, neither my sister nor I ever picked up the habit.
SomewhereTiny8407@reddit
Yes, and it’s crazy to imagine being able to smoke in restaurants nowadays, yet it was so common in the 80’s & 90’s. And they acted like they were doing nonsmokers a huge favor by giving them their own “non-smoking” section with absolutely nothing separating them from smokers besides a sign & invisible line. I’m not old enough to remember smoking in hospitals but that, to me, is completely insane! I smoked from the age of 13-14 until about 5 or 6 years ago. I do vape & keep a pack of Marlboro Menthol Black 100’s on standby, a pack that I’ve had for about a year or more and is stale as fuck lol.
I quit smoking in the house & car when my daughter was born in 2001 & it’s so strange to get into a car of a smoker nowadays. My nephew smokes in his car (mainly weed but still) & a few friends I don’t hang out with as often as once upon a time still smoke in their home. So antiquated, like I’m stepping into the past, especially since they still have a beige phone hung on the wall in their kitchen with a 25 foot spiral cord & they actually still use it to call people lol
I tried to quit numerous times throughout the years & my secret to quitting was by not quitting. I didn’t tell anyone or myself that I was quitting I just stopped. It’s the same way I quit drinking. In the past, When I told others & myself I was quitting it put way too much pressure on me to follow through, it’s all I’d think about & would end up breaking to the pressure. When I stopped I didn’t make it “a thing” I just didn’t do it anymore. I’ll still drink and smoke occasionally, I’m allowed since I didn’t actually “quit” officially, but it’s VERY rare. I drank a glass of Peppermint Schnapps with my niece on X-Mas & smoked a cig when released from jail (missed a CS court date 4 hours away) a few months ago because I didn’t have a vape & I bummed a cig from some folks who were smoking outside the jail. The glass of Schnapps actually gave me a pretty good buzz (in the past I’d have drank the whole bottle lol) & the cig gave me a head rush so Intense I thought i was gonna pass out lol, also tasted nasty as fuck, definitely reminded me of one of the reasons I decided to stop.
recastablefractable@reddit
Grew up in a smoker's house too. Got abused many times over the years for having a window open in winter trying to breathe. And I remember pretty much every extended family members' and family friends' houses all having ash trays and people smoking as well.
No one ever thought to consider a link between the constant illnesses and blinding headaches with the constant smoking going on in the house. Especially after my parents had bunch of people over.
Had a huge blowout with my mother once about people smoking in the house after I'd been away for a while and made the connection about smoke and being sick all the time. She said numerous times when I was growing up when I had my own place I could say whether or not people could smoke there in response to my complaints about the perpetual smoke in the house.
When she came to visit me after I'd left home, joined the military, got married, moved into base housing with my spouse, she lit up in my living room. I told her no one smokes in my house. She argued with me vehemently that she should be allowed to smoke in my house.
I reminded her- my house, my rules and if she didn't like it she could GTFO and find a hotel until her flight home. She held a grudge about that for years.
Buttercreamdeath@reddit
Is your mom my mom?
I had the same exact fight with her. I had pre-mature twins that were finally old enough and healthy enough for visitors. She comes over and lights up feet from them.
She pulled the "I'm your mother" card and I responded with "I'm theirs. You will not smoke around them. Don't like it, leave."
She stayed mad for years. YEARS.
Ok, bye bitch. I'm not waivering on this. Especially since one twin developed asthma that was so bad he needed an inhaler and multiple control medications.
Determinedpony@reddit
My mom smoked for over 40 years. She died at 64 from COPD. Of course, on her death certificate it listed renal failure as the cause, but she was on all types of anxiety meds due to stress from not being able to breathe. I cannot imagine. My dad and his wife both smoked everywhere. It was miserable in the car. Windows up ugh. I begged my mom to stop and she wouldn’t. 64 is too young to die. I never smoked nor did I want to.
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
Yeah my mom technically died of an infection of the heart valve - but went into icu (for 4 months) with renal failure. Smoking wasn’t her only issue - she was sedentary, drank Pepsi exclusively (ice is water right?) and never ate a vegetable, smoked 2 packs a day easily. But she could never get off the ventilators. I saw her code blue twice in the hospital. One the last days I saw her when she was awake she said - “i still don’t have cancer” (which was oddly true and a bizarre hill to literally die on).
Determinedpony@reddit
It would seem they might have had a chance if it were only cancer or COPD, but there were other issues. My mom had congestive heart failure, an enlarged heart, diabetes, manic-depressive, high blood pressure. You name it she had it. She was diagnosed with COPD in 2000. They gave her a seven year life expectancy if she quit smoking that day. She died in 2008… just 2 months before her 65th birthday. I didn’t see my mom die. My husband is retired military, and we were stationed in Shreveport, Louisiana. I was on my way there. My sister was with her. Hospice had been taking care of her. They started her on the morphine drip theThursday before and I had already verbally said goodbye. The last month she was barely there with all the meds she was taking. 😢. It was rough. This September will mark the 18th year without her. I never thought I’d lose my mom. Why?!? I didn’t want to think of her that way. Now both my parents are gone and it is strange to be at the top of the family chain. 😢
Ashamed_Occasion_521@reddit
I was just thinking about this. My mom smoked, we even made cigarettes for her with her little contraption as kids. She didn't smoke a lot though. The worst was hanging out at friends and just smelling of smoke. I don't remember changing clothes or caring really. But looking back it was a horrible smell.I remember neighbors having like unfiltered cigarettes and I would pick them up and look at them. Was like this star design where the filter would be. Fascinating to me. Older I get these totally obscure memories come back. Like why did my brain lock in unfiltered cigarettes memories. Im not a smoker.
Crafty_Calico@reddit
My father smoked Lucky Strikes in the house frequently. It was just common back then. I had a lot of lung problems . I tried smoking in hs but fortunately didn’t get the hang of it. Lost my dad when he was only 49 to his third heart attack.
tiffy68@reddit
My mom was a teacher. She always complained that the smoke in the elementary school teachers' lounge where she worked was thick as pea soup!
SirMellencamp@reddit
No lies detected. I went to a Catholic school and remember going in the teachers lounge and there was a damn cloud on the ceiling. Even some of the nuns smoked in there.
Fabulous_Offer_2646@reddit
My mom smoked like a chimney. Kents. My clothes always smelled, I always smelled. I tried washing my clothes with fabric softener so I could smell nice like the other girls at school. My clothes always smelled good out of the wash, but by the time I wore them to school they smelled like smoke. There was no escaping it, it was oppressive.
I started smoking in my teens, and finally quit when I was 23. My health and quality of life became so much better. It’s been over 30 years, and the smell of cigarette smoke still turns my stomach. I can’t stand it.
I’m proud to say that both my kids grew up in a smoke free environment. And they can’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke, either.
jerseygurl96@reddit
My mom also smoked Kents!! Core memory!!
Necessary-Peace9672@reddit
The smell is sentimental and nostalgic to me; even though smoking killed my mother. It’s amazing how ubiquitous it was…
euqinu_ton@reddit
Both parents smoked and I never remember not hating it. It was the worst experience I can remember. I'd hold my breath in the car for so long, so often, that by age 16 I could hold my breath for 3½ minutes. To this day I still find cigarettes smoke the most foul of smells.
Interestingly, I know many non-smoking friend who don't even notice it.
Then we had kids, and I noticed that they hated it too. Eventually both kids were diagnosed ASD level 2, and sensory perception is all over the place for them. Certain smells are uncomfortably overwhelming.
Chemical_Author7880@reddit
The smell of us was awful but all our parents smoked so no one noticed.
Color_Odd_Numbers@reddit
My parents were smokers. My mom was vigilant about keeping the house smoke/smell free. So instead of just smoking outdoors she would wash the walls as part of regular cleaning, vacuum daily and keep hidden bowls of vinegar under all the furniture to keep the smell down. She laundered all soft items - whether they were machine washable or not. (Couch cushion covers, curtains, pillows, etc- if it fit in the washer she laundered it!) it was a lot of effort. The only place you could ever smell cigarettes from them was in their cars. And even that wasn’t too bad. Mom was constantly airing out the house/cars- even in the snowy, freezing winters. They would have friends over for game nights and it would look like heavy smog at the kitchen table for hours- by morning she’d have the whole place back to perfect!! Crazy.
Accurate_Barnacle_16@reddit
Anyone remember smoking in the grocery store? The metal ash urns on the aisles?
Taylortrips@reddit
I remember the cashiers smoking at the store, with their overflowing ashtrays next to the cash register. I think the only place where people didn’t smoke was church.
JimmyJohn_5150@reddit
Speaking of those metal urns with the bowl of sand to put cigs out in, they had those in the vestibule of the Catholic church we attended when I was a kid.
ChromeYoda@reddit
Both of my folks have always smoked indoors. They still do in their 70’s. It saddens me my kids never wanted to stay the night over there because of that but it’s their choice. My Dad made a bet with me though. When I was 14 he bet me that if I didn’t smoke until 18 he would give $1000. He figured if I went that long without trying it I wouldn’t start smoking. He was right and I made 1K on my 18th birthday. Still not smoking to this day.
Fudloe@reddit
I smoke cigars in my house. I paid for it, I'll do what I want in it. (Yes... I'm divorced)
OR_Seahawks_Fan@reddit
I too grew up with yellow stained walls.
Komaisnotsalty@reddit
My dad smoked, he was the only one. My mom smoked when she was younger (so I'm told) but quit when she had her 3rd kid I think? She quit before I was born, anyway, so I have no memory of her smoking.
My parents joined some weird Evangelical/Mennonite/Baptist bullshit in 1982 and dad supposedly quit smoking, but I do know he started again in my teens. I remember him going for a lot of 'walks'. My dad wasn't a 'go for a walk' kinda guy, and all you had to do was watch for a bit and see the cloud of smoke about 1/2 way down the alley when he lights up.
None of my siblings smoked (my sister did for a short bit in her teens, but not for long. Doubt it was for even a year). I'm the only one who smoked.
My siblings are boomers - raised at home by mom. I was the latchkey Gen X who was an 'oops' and pretty much raised myself with everyone grown & gone already. I had my first cigarette when I was about 6, smoked for real and habitually when I was 14 until I was 52.
I quit 2 & some years ago, though I did have some gaps in those 40 years of smoking. Oddly enough, my lungs are fine and I'm healthy, despite all the crap I put in my lungs over the years.
I sure do miss them though.
OzarksExplorer@reddit
Smokers and drunks
two things we suffered from that are frowned upon today thankfully
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
I think most folks are most sneaky about these activities now. We have vape and pills
Haunting-Ad-8029@reddit
My father smoked a pipe or sometimes cigars.
Right after high school, I went off to US Army basic training. It was close enough that my parents came for my graduation. I remember getting in the car with them...and nearly threw up from the smell!
I guess growing up I just got used to it. But being away from it for 2 months, it was almost too much.
jimbopalooza@reddit
I smoke and a lot of my friends smoke but I don’t think I know anyone that smokes in their house. And I can’t remember the last time I smoked inside of someone’s house. It has been many years.
Somedaydreamer22@reddit
The parents of my best friend from HS smoked. She & I decided to room together in college. The first night after moving in she ended up having to launder all her clothes & bedding because the smell was so strong.
Relative_Housing_375@reddit
I grew up in a family and friends of smokers. I never smoked and didn’t realize I smelled like cigarettes until I married a none smoking woman whose entire family didn’t smoke. I felt gross and thought back to all my friends and their families who didn’t smoke. I must have smelled like I smoked.
Relative_Housing_375@reddit
I just want to add. My Papa smoked when he was younger and quit when I came along in 65. He was smoke free from second hand smoke since 76. He lived to 103 and died in 2022 during COVID.
Badrear@reddit
I grew up in a smoking house, and smoked for 20 years. My first trip to a bar that allowed smoking after I quit was eye opening, but not as much as when I smelled myself the next day.
Relative_Housing_375@reddit
When I lived in it, I never noticed. Now I can instantly smell stale smoke and it’s horrible.
Buttercreamdeath@reddit
I also had a smokers for family. Everyone smoked several packs a day. Marlboro reds, American Spirits, to rolled unfiltered tobacco. I didn't realize I stunk so bad until I moved out. Between the smoke and the frying grease, I was just a rancid biohazard.
Ugh. I know I will have to clean out my dad's place when he dies. I've bought a massive ozone machine for the occasion. When we have to visit, we wear washable things, from our wallets to shoes (thank goodness for sketchers and Vera Bradley lol.). It takes several washes still to get the smell out. Then several cleaning cycles to clean the washing machine. Absolutely disgusting.
Spiritual-Post-9340@reddit
Yeah it was same here. I can’t stand it now, but grew up with it. Even had the big glass ashtray! I stopped smoking mid 30s.
LiHingLucky@reddit
When my grandmother died we had to clean her house. I was surprised to learn the walls were actually white under the brown sludge we washed off them.
So fucking disgusting. I hated the smoke (mom, dad, step mom, step dad) and have never touched a cigarette in my life.
dj_1973@reddit
I think it’s why brown was so popular in home decor in the 70s. Everything was turning brown anyway from the nicotine.
Neko_Dash@reddit
My whole extended family smoked. Only my mother and me didn’t. Family gatherings were toxic. Smoking from dawn to dusk. In the home, in the car… Summer car rides were the worst. Couldn’t roll down the windows, even a little, because Aunt Evelyn would say, “It’s too hot. We have the AC on,” then she blazes another Marlboro, choking what little air is left with smoke, as are the other 3 passengers.
In the end, every single one of them died before 70 due to smoking related diseases.
IfuDidntCome2Party@reddit
The gross part of growing up in a smokers house. We so not realize how everything reeks. Fresh clean laundry, everything. I would leave for school and have to walk through a fog of smoke to get to the front door. Of course schoolmates on the bus would hate the smell. Think pig pen charlie brown. Growing up (while in high school) so many people would ask me if I smoked, because of the stench. Yuck. Walls of our house had the yellow film on everything. No I didn't end up smoking. I can not believe so many new peeps are smoking.
GogglesPisano@reddit
These days I have just one coworker who smokes cigarettes (he's from Russia - seems smoking is still very common overseas, even among young people), and the smell of cigarettes enters the room before he does.
ka_beene@reddit
And taking a big swig off a cup with a straw to discover you are drinking cigarette ashes. I know several other kids of smokers who have had that pleasure of that experience!
flopsygoose@reddit
For the longest time, as a kid, I thought my uncle's apartment walls were painted yellow deliberately. It wasn't until I was older that I realized why.
phillymjs@reddit
My mom smoked, and I hated it. IIRC she said she started at 13, which would have been 1944. She went through about a carton of Vantage Menthols a week when I was a kid, and kept at it until she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986. She quit cold turkey and beat the breast cancer, but cancer finished her off in 1992 when it came back in her lymph nodes.
I still live in my childhood home, and the walls in my living room have a very slight brownish tint to them that's much more apparent when you take a picture or clock off the wall and the outline of it is still visible. I was shocked to find an amazingly intact loose cigarette in the back of a kitchen drawer in October when I cleaned them all out.
ApolloAthena321@reddit
Parents both smoked in the house, the car, whilst cooking and at gatherings. They used to send us to the shop with money to buy their cigs for them. A key part of family holidays was them buying cigs from duty free on the way out, then keeping a check on how many they have to last them. I’m old enough to remember the teachers staff room at school being filled with smoke, which billowed out when they opened the door if I knocked for anything. Fast forward to starting the world of work in the late 80s, staff smoking whilst working in stated offices.
Motor_Inspector_1085@reddit
My mom was one of the outliers that didn’t smoke but my dad did. It was everywhere and I remember that I made more than one ashtray in elementary school for him. It was the traditional clay creation for elementary school kids!
FailWhich890@reddit
That was my life in the 70 s It was normal. We were bussed to RJ Reynolds cigarette factory on school trips. The teachers and adults were given a pack of cigarettes and the kids were given a pack of Hawaiian Punch mix.
dj_1973@reddit
Hawaiian Punch is hard to keep lit.
GogglesPisano@reddit
The widespread ban on smoking in public spaces like restaurants and stores was such a game changer. It greatly improved the experience of going out in public.
I grew up in a non-smoking household and have never smoked, but back in the day if we went out to a restaurant we would stink of cigarette smoke afterward - it got in your clothes, your hair, you literally had to take a shower and change.
I don't think smokers realized how nasty it was for people who didn't smoke.
dj_1973@reddit
My husband has played music in bars since the mid 90s (when he was an older teenager). I was so thankful when they banned smoking in bars here, in the early 2000s. Probably added a few years to his life.
Ed98208@reddit
My dad was a heavy smoker throughout my childhood. Just one right after the other and where we went to eat or on vacation was decided by how much smoking he could do on the way and once we arrived. He quit when he was about 40, but the damage had been done. When he was about 70 he started having problems and was eventually diagnosed with COPD. He lived to 84 but the last couple of years were just him hooked up to an oxygen tank and only leaving home for doctor appointments. I often wonder if the second-hand smoke of 18 years will still get me or my siblings.
AdorableSorbet6651@reddit
My mom has a picture of herself proudly sitting in a full lawn chair so legs out in front and of her - she is 18, and 9 months pregnant 🤰🏻 with me. Right there on top of the big round belly is a fucking ashtray, sort of like a fucking hat on my unborn head. She is smiling with a smoke in her hand. She says they didn’t know better lol. I have been smoking since before birth.
dj_1973@reddit
I had asthma. My parents smoked down cellar, or in the car with windows cracked.
I rode in the back of the pickup truck in the rain rather than cram into the cab with them and my sister, because of the smoking.
House_Junkie@reddit
How about the back 3 rows on a greyhound bus? My grandpa used to take the bus from Bossier City, LA to Buffalo, NY to pick me up for summers with my grandparents. He rolled his own bugler cigarettes and the air conditioner was at the window next to the ash tray. Everyone in the back 3 rows chain smoked, it was so awful. Miss my grandparents so much, do not miss those 2 day greyhound bus rides though 😊
Caseman307@reddit
My parents smoked. Winston Reds. So that’s what I started with. I smoked for 30 years and it remains the single dumbest decision I ever made. Quit 5 years ago but I’ll never be what I could’ve been.
bene_gesserit_mitch@reddit
There were distinct outlines of the pictures we removed from the walls of my parents' house when we moved them out. My dad smoked a pipe, and when I'd use his backpack for school, I recall girls commenting on the pleasant smell of his pipe smoke. Normal at the time, weird now.
Back then smoke was everywhere, today it's nowhere near as ubiquitous, and if someone lights up, I notice it from a block away.
YesNoMaybe@reddit
Most pipe tobacco is different (especially if they are aromatics). My kids love the smell of my pipe smoke, which is an very occasional vice for me - like maybe once or twice a week.
bene_gesserit_mitch@reddit
I always wondered why cigarette smoke couldn't be made to smell better. Many brands from many countries, and they all smell like shit. The world at large would be more accepting of it if it smelled less terrible.
bigredthesnorer@reddit
I grew up in a similar household. My dad died of lung cancer.
I'm concerned about the damgage done by inhaling all that second-hand smoke for 20 years.
yorkiemom68@reddit
I’m sorry about your dad. My mom never smoked but my grandparents did. She was diagnosed with COPD at 70. She’s on inhalers and a nebulizer from second hand smoke. Thankfully no oxygen. It is a risk. I wish you well.
mnpohler@reddit
Same. And lung cancer is a horrible death
MissPicklechips@reddit
Fridays were payday, and we’d go out for pizza. We’d have to stop at the bank first to deposit paychecks, and there was always a line. It wasn’t too bad when the weather was nice and they’d open the windows. Both my parents smoked. On cold or rainy days, my sister and I would get hotboxed by Marlboros.
Dad quit in his late 40’s after he was diagnosed with several chronic medical conditions. Mom never quit.
Sitting_pipe@reddit
I remember they smoked so much that the smoke would settle in the air and i would get up from the floor where i was watching tv and slowly move my hands through this layer of nicotine haze floating there in the sunlight...
anyone remember that?
bombeck1405@reddit
Very well, it would hang down from the ceiling like a toxic curtain, leaving a 40 or 50cm strip from the floor that was sort of breathable. I also remember getting my arse handed to me one night when I couldn't stand it anymore and left the room. Mum came looking for me about 20 minutes later and realized why I had left.
I moved out at 17 and haven't had lungs full of smoke since then. Typically, they both gave up at some point and became the epitome of reformed smokers, if only they could have seen a small part of how vile and disgusting it was for me as a child.
Ice_princess50@reddit
My mom was also a smoker, and I remember being in middle school and being made fun of cause I smelled like smoke. This prompted my mom to start cutting back on her smoking to include the house and car, she only did it outside from then on. What a difference it made!
Reader47b@reddit
I grew up in a smoking house, but I never smoked myself. I got used to the smell. When I went away to college and came back for the summer, it really struck me.
HoosegowFlask@reddit
One time, after moving to a new place, my mom started making my dad smoke outside. And from that point on I was very sensitive to the smell of cigarettes.
Kilashandra1996@reddit
Yeah, coming home from college to the smell sucked! Mom and both my dad's parents smoked. Grampa died of lung cancer. I never smoked. My brother has more recently picked up cigars.
Mom eventually quit. It wasn't Grampa's lung cancer that got her to quit. ("That could have been anything" from a nurse!) Nope, it was moving a picture to paint the walls and seeing the difference between nicotined walls and nonnicotined picture spot! Insert something about caring more about appearances than about the family's health...
Mom got lung cancer herself in 2020. Did you know that surgery to remove a cancerous lung lobe is "elective surgery?" Really? Mom has put me on a few of her current medical records. She told her neurosurgeon that she "has never smoked!" REALLY?!? 25 years of a pack a day ain't exactly never! "I quit 20 years ago, so that reset everything." Whatever lady...
northofwall@reddit
Same. I remember seeing the smoke in the air as sunbeams shown through. Now whenever I get an old book or keepsake from my mom the smell takes me right back. I now wonder how much my classmates noticed the smell on me. Although half were in the same mix.
Never smoked myself.
kerill333@reddit
Both of my parents smoked. I remember watching them take a deep satisfying drag so many times as a kid that I used to carry a pencil around and mimic them…
I remember a family holiday where my uncle was smoking so much that the car was full of smoke, I could barely see across it.
I have never smoked, the smell of it makes me feel sick.
Renegadegold@reddit
The morning sun haze in the kitchen while I look at the back of the Capin Crunch box.
JournalistBitter5934@reddit
The impacts can often come later in life...seeing a big spike in cancer among otherwise healthy friends in their early 50's. Common factor was spending first 20 years growing up in a smoker(s) household.
no_id_never@reddit
This! I have scarring in my lungs and I have lost 25% of volume. They always ask if I smoked. I never did, but mom would have one lit in the kitchen and another in the bedroom. I left at 17 and never lived at home again. So I did, in effect, smoke for 17 years.
wasgary@reddit
I also grew up in a 2 smoker household. And it wasn’t until after I left for college and came back for a visit that I realized how much cigarettes stink. They were just part of the atmosphere I lived in; I couldn’t even smell them until I was away from them for several months. I was horrified to realize I had been walking around reeking like an ashtray my entire life and never even knew it.
arualmartin@reddit
Both my parents were in medicine (Dr and Nurse) and they smoked in the house & car when we were born through jr high. Lol this is why us Gen xers are invincible. Now, I don't smoke, drink, nor do any drugs, just HRT 🤣
FormerCollegeDJ@reddit
I’m fortunate neither of my parents smoked, but my paternal grandfather did (a pipe) and so did many of my father’s siblings. Many of them visited my grandfather when my family did (roughly every 6-8 weeks). In some cases we stayed at the house overnight, especially after my maternal grandmother died. I remember after every visit my clothes reeked of cigarette smoke, and to my nose it smelled awful. I’d have to wash my clothes to get the smell out regardless if I wore them or not.
YesNoMaybe@reddit
I quite enjoy the smell of most pipe tobacco smoke, especially if it's an aromatic. I have a small collection of pipes and smoke a bowl maybe once a week (it's a small, occasional vice).
knoxcos@reddit
I’m a non-smoker, but it’s probably more accurate to say that I quit when I moved out on my own, despite never lighting up myself.
My mom smoked a lot, and when her parents came to visit, the three of them and her brother would play cards and smoke. So much that I walked in to get something and after a discard, my grandpa waved his hand in the air toward the discard in an attempt to clear the smoke away and asked what card it was.
Can’t imagine how I never picked up a cig myself.
I remember cleaning the car and wiping yellow nicotine sludge from each window, and even did much the same only once with the walls at home.
ParanoidFactoid@reddit
My dad smoked four packs of Marlboro reds a day. Before that he smoked filterless Pall Malls. At the end of his life he quit. But not before that stuff did a number on his lungs and heart. He died from COPD, a smoking related illness, at 67. And of course, I smoked too! But only for a few years. I quit in my late twenties.
YesNoMaybe@reddit
Damn, just thinking about that - today that cost would be around $900 a month.
mtcwby@reddit
My parents, aunt and uncle and another couple bought a rental at one point and the people had been smokers. I just remember going in there and ripping out all the carpet, painting and the streaks of brown dripping down as we tried to windex one of those walls of mirrors like were popular then. It was so nasty. Despite all that you could still smell it a little bit.
PaulmBeachPaul@reddit
My dad used to smoke 2 packs of Luckies a day, made it to 88. He used to tell me only smoked outside too, but I would be woken up a few times a week with my second story bedroom reeking. He was in the basement puffing away, by the time I got downstairs he had it hidden and out. I feel better now that I wasn’t the only one.
mtcwby@reddit
No smoker thinks we can smell it and we can all smell it
BullMcCracken@reddit
I'm the only outlier in my family that never smoked. Not once. I was bullied for smelling like an ashtray by other kids AND teachers. I was always the one whose locker and backpack was searched when the schools did sweeps. They never found anything, obviously, but they never believed that my hair, clothes shoes , everything stunk so bad from other people. I had to beg my mom to crack a window in the car and then it was 50/50 if she would actually do it. She used trapping me in the car with her and my aunts as punishment. Like asking for the window to be cracked insulted her. She passed a few years ago from COPD. It took her 10 years post diagnosis to quit for real. She lived 7 years after she quit. I never could imagine doing that crap to my kids.
Fran0349@reddit
Everyone everywhere smoked when I was growing up. My father died of lung cancer at age forty and my mother kept on smoking for another 15 years. Oddly enough I had almost constant respiratory illnesses when I was a child.
Celebration_This@reddit
My dad was the only one that smoked. I always wanted to try it and I ended up smoking for almost 10 years (16-25 or so) before I quit. I didn’t smoke in front of family (except for one brother who smoked occasionally), so I don’t even know if they knew.
It was only 97 cents/pack when I started, and when they got to over $2/pack I thought that was wayyyy too expensive and quit.
FancyRise@reddit
My entire family smoked like chimneys. I can remember being a kid at my grandparents house over the Christmas holidays and it was so smoky inside that my eyes were burning. They didn’t even open the windows. Seems cruel us kids got exposed to so much second hand smoke.
Emotional_Ad5714@reddit
My parents quit smoking when I was a couple months old, because my Mom accidentally burned me with a cigarette. But, they both started smoking again when I was about 10 and continued until about the time I left for college.
Reapr@reddit
Both parents smoked, but eventually quit when I was in my teens, I came to really hate smoking until there was this cool girl that smoked of course
Cue 30 year addiction, finally dropped it about 5 years ago, never looked back.
spoink74@reddit
Both my parents smoked. After their divorce they each quit. Mom quit first, then dad a few years down the road.
So here’s the weird thing: when I smell second hand cigarette smoke, it takes me to a warmer childhood time where mom and dad were together and things were okay.
The brain is fucked up. I don’t smoke but I wouldn’t mind sitting in a smoking section.
No_Yogurt9574@reddit
It’s not fucked up. My parent’s didn’t smoke but my grandmother did. She smoked menthol cigarettes and that smell always reminds me of her and it makes me happy.
Patient-Cap-4004@reddit
I don't think it's remotely, "dumb." Our sense of smell - more than the four senses - evokes our memory more than photographs can get close to.
Old pictures are more like reminders, "that the day Uncle Harry got so drunk he couldn't stand up."
In the case of the smoky house aroma, your sense of smell drops you right back into the living you were in when mom and dad were still together.
I should mention that there is zero science behind my theory of our sense of smell, only the almost 55 years of my own experience. That has to count for something.
Anyway, if nothing else, one fellow gen-x-er hereby validates your association of a smoky house to a nostalgic sense of feeling home. Tho, I cannot validate regularly spending time in one.
Not at our age!
lalapine@reddit
I hated my parents smoking and the smell of cigarettes so much. And we didn’t have a great relationship. But after they died I kept a few mementos. Six years later my dad’s wallet still has a nicotine smell, and I find that oddly comforting.
PiggyBear6667@reddit
Consciously knowing that second hand smoke kills, but scooting a little closer because it reminds me of my mama. Life is weird.
Trick-Reindeer-7393@reddit
This morning, while cleaning my father’s house, I found an old children’s book. He told me I could take it home, so I did and set it on my dining table. Then I caught a whiff of something—cigarettes. It was the book! After more than 40 years, it still carries the smell of cigarette smoke.
Sad_Apple_3387@reddit
I got a story for you. I met my spouse 17 years ago. A few months after we met, we knew we would be together longterm, so we planned a trip to go visit his mom (and her partner) who lived in the house where my spouse grew up.
His mom is a true smoker, not a social smoker, not an occasionally when they are stressed out smoker, she’s a smoke every 20-30 minutes smoker. So, since I was still a smoker at the time, I didn’t think it would be a big deal to stay a few nights with smoker mom.
We get the room set up where we are going to sleep and there is this slight bowling alley smell in the air. Of course, the 40 year old shag carpet isn’t doing any favors here.
Smoker mom is bragging to us telling us how clean she keeps the house and that she only smokes outside. We’re hanging out and I tell my spouse I can smell smoke in the house. Come to find out, by “outside” she means smoking in the breezeway between the garage and the house.
We got so congested from staying in that house for three days.
Nopedontcarez@reddit
My parents both smoked. My mom quit when she remarried. My sister and I hated it and our step father got her to stop, thankfully.
My father kept smoking until he died and going to his place was just awful sometimes. I hate the smell and have most of my life.
Fragrant_Trade_9635@reddit
I grew up in a Smokers house too and didn't realize I SMELLED like Cigarettes my entire life until I went to Basic Training. No one ever told me I smelled bad. I could smell all of it when I came home for my senior year. I did a split option training. I kept my windows open, a towel at the bottom of the door, covered the vents. I couldn't stand it once I finally had fresh air and a break from it. My mom was the smoker and still smokes to this day into her mid 70's. When I go visit I have to sit outside, i don't' want to go in and I don't take my kids that often so they aren't subjected to it. But I wish someone had told me that I smelled like cigarettes growing up.
Genny415@reddit
Lots of other people smelled like cigarettes too. So they probably either couldn't smell it on you, or didn't notice, or didn't think anything of it because it was so usual. So relax, it didn't matter ☺️
User-Pizza-8785@reddit
I tried a couple cigarettes. I remember smoking one night in high school and thinking “so this is why”. It felt good. Then I got violently ill and have not touched one since. Both parents smoked. My brother for a year or two but all three of us don’t touch it and live in smoke free homes. It is the smell, the hair, the fingers, the teeth, the expense, the inconvenience (we live in a northern state, watching people smoking in 10 degree weather without a jacket is fascinating.) I feel I’m lucky the it never took with me.
Ronald-J-Mexico@reddit
My mom smoked until her 60s. Our house smelled like crap....she divorced and got a b/f who moved in, and smoked unfiltered camels. The house was disgusting. I moved out after graduating college....that b/f dropped dead of a heart attack in his truck, someone saw him slumped over on the wheel.
Cigarettes are the worst, I loathe them with a passion. My brother in law Jody just passed at 64, smoker for 40 years. His dad used to fill the cigarette vending machines.
FuturamaRama7@reddit
“Obviously I started smoking…” omg why???
Growing up in a chain smoker’s house made me so anti-smoking that I run away from someone on the street lighting up. I don’t want to ever inhale one molecule of second hand smoke ever again. Sometimes I remember the smell of my (now deceased) parent’s rotting yellow teeth and I want to hurl.
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
It was 1989.
FuturamaRama7@reddit
I was in high school in 1989 and we had a student smoking lounge INDOORS (public high school), so I get it. But it was so disgusting to live in my house that I couldn’t imagine wanting to suck on a cancer stick.
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
My high school had a smoking fence, only heshers and goths were out there.
TheBaroness1934@reddit
I just posted the same!
mitkase@reddit
My mom smoked and we lived in the country, so car rides were basically just nicotine fests. I hated the smell and always bitched about it.
Cut to my college years where I'm suddenly smoking 2+ packs a day.
Cut to after my heart attack in my 30s when after immediately quitting (thank goodness for nicotine gum) I could smell a cigarette from a block away. I couldn't be anywhere near it.
Do I have a point? I guess it's that cigarettes are stupid.
midlife_dadpulse73@reddit
My dad smoked my whole life coming up. I smoked until I was 47, started at 14.
It is weird looking back, ashtrays everywhere, seemingly EVERYONE smoked. Different times for sure.
Mysterious_Battle585@reddit
On airplanes even that was crazy. But the cloud you'd see in some bars was something else.
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
So one of our favorite dive bars banned smoking and man that was a terrible idea, smoke masked the smell of urine and bleach and we could see all the gross corners of the bar
midlife_dadpulse73@reddit
The one that always got me was, in grocery stores.
I could never wrap my head around that
keysandcoffee@reddit
I (57f) have a huge family and everybody smoked indoors: aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents. Then when my generation started having kids, and because we knew better by being educated in school about the dangers of smoking, the rule became “no smoking in the house with babies present”. It didn’t take too long for everyone to comply with that rule and once it became the norm, it seemed crazy that anyone thought it was ok to pollute the air like that in a home.
Eets_Chowdah@reddit
My aunt and uncle were heavy smokers. I remember my uncle gave me a cool Corvette clock with a tinted mirror. Turns out it was a normal mirror with about 25 years of tar built up on it. The rags I used to clean it with just reeked afterward.
Waltzing_Methusalah@reddit
There’s a picture of my mom, pregnant with me, holding a cigarette in one hand and resting a martini on her belly with the other.
cyclingbubba@reddit
Both of my parents smoked hard, almost to the point of chain smoking. Of the four kids, the biggest birth weight was 6 lbs, 2 Oz. Everyone had small babies due to smoking.
My mother was shocked when my wife had her first baby weighing in at 10 lbs, 4 Oz. Neither my wife or I ever smoked.
Cig companies even promoted "slim babies" and easier delivery as a beneficial effect of smoking. I think there is a special place in hell for cigarette company executives.
NightingaleNine@reddit
fantastic username
cinnamongirl73@reddit
My Dad is one of those people who will pick up smoking for a few weeks, put down, and not touch them for years. He’s always been that way. My Mom and all my aunts smoked. All of the pics from my childhood looks like people through a haze!
I smoke now. But I’m like my Dad-I smoke for a while then put them down for years.
BuckyD1000@reddit
This is the main thing that comes to my mind when kids ask what the 70s/80s were really like.
There's just no way they could truly conceive how normalized and ubiquitous cigarettes were. It seems so insane now (because it was).
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
You could smoke in the mall, you could smoke in many offices, hospitals and restaurants and airplanes had smoking sections
SomeGuyClickingStuff@reddit
I remember freezing in the car because my dad would crack the windows of the car when dropping me off at school.
Lafleur_111@reddit
Both my grandparents smoked. I used to stay with them often. My mother says it’s a miracle that all we wound up with was allergies and my asthma. She also thinks that the heavy smoking killed their cockatoo prematurely. Even the dog smelled like he had inhaled a pack of Benson and Hedges. After they both passed away, everything in the house smelled like smoke. It took years to get the small out of their cabin. Neither of my parents ever smoked
QueenRotidder@reddit
yeah, I smelled like an ashtray my entire childhood and I had no idea.
mados123@reddit
Yup. Walking into a wall of smoke after I just took a shower and being so fresh and so clean motivated me to move out.
redfoxblueflower@reddit
Agree! I also grew up with two smokers. Dad quit early in my life, Mom didn't quit until she spent 5 weeks in the hospital in her late 50's due to ARDS - Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome - she went into the hospital because she blew a hole in her large intestine (diverticulitis to the max) and once she was on the ventilator, she literally couldn't get back off because her body never took back over. A heart attack at 55 didn't even make her quit.
Anyway, I remember vividly a few things - for one, I was thankful that she only ever smoked in the kitchen in winter, and on the back porch in summer. At least it didn't go beyond that although everything still stunk. She always smoked with me in the car my entire life. Her real estate office was laughingly divided into two - one side of the wall for smokers, one side of the wall for non-smokers. I also loved restaurants and airplanes where there was no divider at all between the non-smoking and smoking sections. Now, living in the US, I hardly ever come across smokers anywhere...thankfully.
Having traveled a lot recently, I found it kind of interesting that Amsterdam and Japan in general do allow more smoking than here in the US. In Tokyo, we were taken to a bar where they allowed smoking. In Amsterdam, they are seemingly allowed to smoke whatever they want wherever they want outside. It's everywhere. And when I smelled it, I immediately thought back to the US in the 1970's and 1980's and the same situation of my childhood and teenage years.
WaterwingsDavid@reddit
My parents both smoked. They quit when I was a teen. Then my mom started smoking again and blamed me!!!!! Talk about not taking personal responsibility!
One place they never smoked in was the car as my dad was ocd about it. I never cared for the smell and luckily never picked up the habit.
who-waht@reddit
I grew up in a smokers house. I hated it. Hated the way I smelled. My clothes smelled. My books smelled. Never smoked. Resented the smell when I went back to visit my mother. My father quit around the time he got re-married. My mother and stepfather quit by the time I had kids. Visiting them became a much more pleasant experience.
PrehistoricSquirrel@reddit
I remember my first visit back home after leaving to college. The smoke smell hit me hard when I first walked in the door. Growing up in it - that's just the smell of "home". You don't notice it really until you've been away for a while.
lime_lecroix@reddit
Even as recently as the early 2000’s my husband and his coworkers were allowed and encouraged to smoke at work. This was at Japan Tobacco International, which was a part of Reynolds Tobacco in Winston-Salem, NC. I grew up in Stokes County, NC, where many people smoked, but my mother had grown up in the 50’s and 60’s with heavy smokers, and she hated the smell and she became a respiratory therapist, so we were different in lots of ways from our classmates and friends in the 70’s and 80’s. She would constantly lecture us on how bad smoking was. This resulted in my sisters, father, stepdad and I all sneaking and smoking and lying about it for years. My stepdad smoked and drank himself to death, my father is currently dying of cancer and cirrhosis, my sisters and I have long since quit, and my mom has awful asthma and lung issues.
mtcrick@reddit
My dad was a heavy smoker, unfiltered Pall Malls. Eeeew. In the car, at the dining room table, everywhere. He quit at age 48 after smoking since about 16. He'd gotten the most recent strain of influenza and was sick for like 3 weeks. When he got better, he realized that he'd kicked the nicotine withdrawals and would be crazy to start again. He turned into the biggest anti-smoker! LOL. But it was too late, he got COPD. He's still alive, just turned 89. Must be one lucky guy in that regard, other than the COPD.
Mom smoked for a while, mainly to help her lose weight. What a role model. She quit about the time I was born I guess though.
txtw@reddit
Ooh Pall Mall gang checking in. Mom started at 13, and dad started at 12. Cancer got my dad at 48, now it’s coming for my mom at 83. My lungs suck, too. I never smoked but I am terrified it will come for me, too, since I was raised in a cloud of it. Good times!
kitashla42@reddit
I have this fear too. My dad died of lung cancer at 52. My grandmother at 78. I've never smoked but genetically we tend to get cancer easily and I worry Ill end up with it after so much heavy exposure.
JimmyJohn_5150@reddit
Ha! My dad smoked Pall Malls too. Mom was a Marlboro lady.
73rd-virgin@reddit
My dad was a smoker, but I don't recall the house smelling like an ashtray. I remember seeing those ashtrays that looked like a tin can with a funnel attached to the top. I think those were supposed to keep the smoke to a minimum.
My dad stopped smoking back in 1990. Stopped drinking, eating and breathing, too.
I remember my (then) 13 year old sister swearing that was never gonna smoke because "cigarettes killed her daddy".
She's just now quitting after spending the night in the hospital for chest pains.
As far me, I never actively smoked.
From 1991-1998, I worked at a stop'n'rob. When I got hired to work in a light industrial job in 1998, I had to take a pulmonary test because I had to use a respirator. I passed out during the test.
Just shy of 30, I had the lung capacity of a 68 year old. They asked me if I smoked. I told them no,but at my last job I passively (second hand) smoked three packs of Newports and two joints a day.
Left-Thinker-5512@reddit
Grew up in a smoker’s house, too. Both parents smoked, probably a pack a day each. I never took it up, fortunately. I hated being in the car in the winter and choking on the smoke and not being able to roll down a window.
Many years later my Mom passed away and my Dad had to come live with one of my siblings. He wasn’t healthy enough to care for himself. When we cleaned out my parents’ apartment I was disgusted with how the smell of smoke had penetrated EVERYTHING. Books, wood furniture, everything. The worst was when we took things off the walls—there was a white spot on the wall where the pictures hung, and smoke stains all around where the pictures had been. It made me sick.
lalapine@reddit
I could have written this! The smoke in the house was bad enough growing up, but the car was torture. And cleaning out my parents’ apartment after they died was rough. We threw most of their stuff out due to the cigarette smell, and when we took things off walls really noticed how yellow the walls were.
Left-Thinker-5512@reddit
I’m a book nerd, and my Dad had some really nice books that he gave to me when we cleaned the place out. The stink was so bad (after letting them air out on my porch for two weeks) that I very reluctantly had to throw them out. We donated the rest to the place he and my Mom went to when they went out to drink. They would have a yearly flea market to get money to give to veterans charities. We gave the books to them to sell because they were all smokers and we felt that it wouldn’t matter to most of them. I never realized how distinctive the smell of burning tobacco is until I left home (I have never smoked).
Weird_Tea2539@reddit
When we cleaned out my great aunt's condo the tobacco stains were running down the painted walls in rivulets
CallMeDot@reddit
Parents both chain smoked everywhere, stepfather until the day he died, mom switched to weed 15 years ago. When I was a kid, if I complained they would blow smoke in my face and close windows. Mom threw the biggest tantrum when I told her my home was non smoking, not even in the garage. Both my kids had childhood asthma and I can’t stand the smell of either smoke.
Taylortrips@reddit
Omg I just laughed at the blowing smoke in your face if you complained. Parenting was so different back then, wasn’t it??
Holiday-Window2889@reddit
At mealtimes, while playing cards and boardgames; ALLLLL the adults smoked.
Figure out where everyone's smoke was wafting and sit down at the other end, and of course it all starts coming at you.
Training-Finish-2754@reddit
Both of my parents smoked. I have 3 siblings, myself and my brother became smokers (he is the only person I know who still smokes!), my other brother occasionally smokes a cigar, and my sister never smoked anything. My husband also smoked. I quit after 20 years, hubby had quit for a few years but restarted and then quit for good when I quit. My parents quit about 2 months after I quit. Cigarette smoke is now absolutely REPULSIVE to me, it sets my nose on fire and makes me choke, and I cannot believe I used to do it- heavily. That being said, I think cigar smoke is far more repulsive. I have been smoke free now for 14 years, the best decision I ever made in my life.
HereToCalmYouDown@reddit
My mom still smokes. She's always trying to give me her stuff, as old people sometimes do, and I always have to politely refuse because I know anything she gives me will smell like smoke. At this point when she dies I feel like all her stuff is basically a total loss. She does have a couple boxes of old photos that I would like to keep but I'm worried even those will reek.
new2bay@reddit
I bought a camera on eBay once that, unknown to me when I bought it, came from a smoker’s house. I put it in a plastic bin with a couple of dinner plates covered in baking soda. You want want a lot of surface area for the baking soda to absorb the smell into. After a couple weeks, the camera was free of any detectable smell. That would probably work on your photos as well.
Absotivly_Posolutly@reddit
MIL gave us her Food-Saver vacuum bag sealer. She only used it once but it sat in her house for several months.
I cleaned it several times over because I really wanted to use it. But every time I turned it on, you could smell the cigarette scented air coming out of the vacuum pump.
After a year in our house it STILL smelled horrible. I threw it in the trash and just bought a new one.
Apprehensive-Log8333@reddit
I got a TON of beads and buttons from an elderly lady who went into a nursing home. She smoked, so I had to wash every single bead and button. I used a tea strainer, soapy water, and clean water rinse. I don't know if it was worth it
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
They will - but non plush items can kinda air out (trust me)
Extension-Wedding-74@reddit
My spouse had asthma all throughout his childhood until he moved out of his parents' house. Never had another asthma attack after that. Imagine smoking in your house and car around your kid that suffers from that. Blows my mind.
Deyaneria@reddit
Lol I had to laugh at this for two reasons. 1. My mother's side of the family did smoke. 2. My maiden name literally was Smoker. 😂
kitashla42@reddit
My mom and step-dad didnt smoke. My dad and stepmom did. And my grandparents and pretty much everyone else in my family. My dad's side of the family was in the tobacco industry. My mom's parents were just heavy smokers. Everything was yellowed at all the houses. And I remember the smell. It was so bad.
We would spend the summers with my dad and in the few days before we would fly home, my stepmom would wash all (my 2 brothers and I) clothes so my mom would have less to do right before school started. And I felt terrible because the first thing my mom would do was wash all our clothes again several times and leave the suitcases outside to air out. It was the only way to get all the cigarettes smell out. But at like 11 - 13 years old, I didn't know how to tell my stepmom that. I just know I hated smelling like that.
My brothers picked up smoking in their teens and continue to this day. (Well, one of my brother's passed a few years ago.) For some reason, I never had any desire. Never even tried one...though I was fine with smoking pot at various stages of my life.
But it has always been a hard enough line that smoking cigarettes has been a deal breaker when dating. I can't have my home/car like that again.
cnew111@reddit
I’m a young boomer but hang out with you X’ers because I’m right on the edge. With that said, I thought every parent smoked. At least in my parent’s social circle that was true. In my youth every adult smoked.
SoCalMoofer@reddit
In our den my folks had two recliners. The big TV was there. No couch. Just mom and dad's easy chairs.
They would smoke in there after dinner and watch TV. The smoke level started at the ceiling, and slow got lower and lower into the rest of the air in the room. Like a layer of smog in LA. I ducked under it. LOL
Alternative_Sock_608@reddit
The smoking on the airplanes is crazy to think about. I remember playing with the ashtrays on the armrests. And cars had a cigarette lighter built in. My dad smoked too and we had decorative ashtrays all over the house.
slayursister@reddit
Memory of a dismal flight on people's express with clouds of smoke unlocked
possumpigposer@reddit
I grew up this way as well. Nobody wanted to sit by me on the bus because I stunk so bad
captain_hug99@reddit
I didn’t know how I smelled until college. It took a semester before my nose adjusted
TrainingLow9079@reddit
It is weird to think making clay ashtrays was a normal art project and restaurants had smoking sections
FloraSuena@reddit
Begging my parents to roll down the car windows even just one inch, ugh I was so carsick alllll the time. ALL of my baby pictures have an ashtray with a burning cig visible. There’s also a photo of me, maybe 1.5/2 years old holding a beer bottle and a cigarette, haha hilarious… oh yeah and I’m also completely naked🤷🏻♀️This photo hung on the wall of my parents’ house in one of those picture collage frames for 40+ years ☹️ I have it now stuffed in a closet
zenmaster_B@reddit
I grew up in a home where basically all of the adults smoked— my parents, including my young adult sisters (much older than I), my visiting relatives, and I hated it. I just know I smelled like an ashtray until I moved out from home. I have never smoked because I didn’t like that dusty, acrid smell that became part of everything in the house. I hated that in HS, dudes would try to bum a cigarette off of me and would argue when I told them I didn’t smoke, lol. It was a different time, very ridiculous when I think about it now. Even as an adult, I would visit my parents, and when I went home I would take off my clothes and take a shower. I loved my parents/family very much, but good god it was rough, seemed like everything revolved around smoking. I have this weird glitch now that I associate smoking with poverty or being white trash
bluudclut@reddit
Cigarette smoke was everywhere. Both my parents smoked.
Everywhere you went people smoked. You constantly stunk of it and everything seemed to have a layer of brown grease on it
Snoo_45369@reddit
Mother smoke from 16 until it killed her with lung cancer when she was 68. She smelled. I would spray air freshener and later perfume to get rid of it. My parents were not together. My dad smoked weed all my life, similar to the consumption of the amount of cigarettes. It was a joke that I had to spray myself before I left, wasnt legal at the time anywhere. I would much rather sit in a weed house than a cigarette house.
Nervous-Rooster7760@reddit
My parent both smoked when they met. He quit when I was so young I can’t remember him having smoked. Mom still smokes. He made her smoke outside when we were pretty young. The front porch is smoking porch. It reeks of ashtray. I can’t stand to be out there. I love being outside but that porch is awful after years of smoking.
dofrogsbite@reddit
It used to be my job to roll smokes with one of those machines as a kid, I learned to roll joints at about 8 years old as well.
kittysensei@reddit
You could still smoke at your desk when I got my first office job.
Logical_consequences@reddit
My neighbor’s parents smoked. And when I came home, my long thick hair and my clothes reeked. Ewww
Later, the same thing happened in bars, etc. Hated that so much.
HopefulTrick3846@reddit
Both parents and my older sister smoked. I picked it up when I was about 14. We always went to the smoking section in restaurants and on airplanes. In the car the window was cracked while they both puffed away. I finally quit when I was 22. Now I only smoke when I’m camping. Kind of a stupid ritual… going someplace where the air is so clean and fresh and light a cigarette.
shitposter1000@reddit
Mom is 75 and still smokes in her house. One of my brothers was there this week to paint. He sent me this in progress.
She talks about donating her furniture and stuff. I told her that no one takes donations from smokers houses. She takes that as a personal insult. Oh well. Stop smoking inside then.
Sufficient_Stop8381@reddit
My grandfather and dad smoked until the late 70s. They quit because I developed asthma. My grandfather kept chewing tobacco after he quit cigarettes. I remember the huge freestanding ashtray shaped like a horse head. Living in tobacco country, it was pretty common everywhere and in buildings well into the late 90s. Maybe later, I can’t remember. It sucked if you had a respiratory issue, just being around smoke would trigger my asthma but fortunately it got better as I got older. Clean air is much better. Although I’m weird and actually like the smell of fresh tobacco, not stale.
Yummy_Castoreum@reddit
My sister had asthma and my dad just kept chain-smoking anyway. Everywhere. At home. At work. In the car with the kids, with the windows rolled up. Cigarette smoke still reminds me of him, as does gin.
Playwithclay11@reddit
My stepdad is still smoking 🚬 it’s just gross I always leave smelling but I want him to eat . I quit many times it finally stuck years ago.
JimmyJohn_5150@reddit
Mine both smoked too. Didnt think much of it since back in the 70s and 80s everyone smoked. Even after my mom died a couple years ago (dad died in 2016) we could still smell the smoke residue in the house. Both had stopped smoking 20 years earlier. Now if i get a whiff of cigarette smoke in the air I get nostalgic.
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
Same - I mean I enjoyed smoking too in my 20s.
JimmyJohn_5150@reddit
I did too, smoked in high school then became a weekend smoker in college and beyond. Stopped for good in 2006.
sillvrdollr@reddit
I used to write "No smoking" signs and put them on the chairs when my mom had her friends over. I'd get spanked for that
Kelly_blue_brook88@reddit
Oh that just triggered a memory - I wrote “Please don’t smoke” on a piece of white paper and rolled it up and stuck it in my dad’s pack. I got spanked for that!
Jag-@reddit
My dad had a small hobby room that he chained smoked in with the door closed. You literally could not see through the cloud of smoke. Lost half a lung to cancer a few years ago. But he eventually quit and plays tennis at 89!
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
Just a theory did your dad stay active? (It seems like it) mine does he quit in his 60s (he’s 83) - he has bad lungs but from TB
Jag-@reddit
Yeah. Very active.
Bloody_Mabel@reddit
My parents both smoked. My dad smoked two packs per day. He quit cold turkey when I was 16.
My mom smoked if she wanted to drop 5 pounds. She could pick it up for a few weeks and just as easily quit a few weeks later. My sister can do this too. It makes me wonder if there is a gene they both express that makes them resistant to nicotine addiction.
All my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins smoked. I remember a haze in the air during family holidays. It was the worst.
I have never smoked and I was kind of obnoxious in my anti-smoking zeal.
Mysterious_Battle585@reddit
My mom smoked until her mid 60s I want to say. Everywhere doing everything. Don't know what the doctor finally did or showed her to scare her off then but she finally quit and never went back.
Weak-Golf-9079@reddit
Both parents were chainsmokers. My 8th grade math teacher was walking the room during a test and stopped at my desk, leaned over and asked if I smoked. I was self conscious from that day until the day I moved out. When I was old enough to drive, I started keeping my clothes in my car rather than the house.
Less_Than_Average1@reddit
Have a picture of me and my mom when I was a baby. She stuck a cigarette in my pacifier so it looked like I was ripping a cig. My favorite photo of us.
Fruitcrackers99@reddit
You just triggered a memory of riding in my Aunt Patsy’s car, windows up, while she and my mom chain smoked all the way to their sister’s house 2 hours away. It’s a miracle I’m alive, honestly.
burnedimage@reddit
My parents chain smoked everywhere. My "father" had back surgery in 1983 and I had to bring him cigarettes to the hospital. I was a little kid. But I had to acquire cigarettes and Mickeys like a Viking. I vividly remember the day my "mother" quit smoking. This was the actual conversation. "Only one of us can smoke you stupid horrible bitch" Followed by my "mother" putting down a pack of cigarettes and spite quitting. Which was fun. Neither of them smoke anymore but there are still huge ashtrays (you know the exact one) at both of there respective dwelling situations.
makeup1508@reddit
I always(half joking/half not) say that I smoked for the first 18 years of my life so that's why I don't smoke now. None of my friends and very few of my classmates smoked. I think for the same reason. I also think that GenX not smoking is why Millenials & GenZ smoke more--they weren't repelled by the smell of cigarettes the same way we were.
Cruise1313@reddit
Both of my parents smoked in the house and in the cars (they would not roll the windows down either) a lot. I absolutely hated it and was miserable. My aunt and uncle also smoked and was even worse when they came over to our house or we went to theirs. My grandparents did not smoke.
I tried to stay outside as much as possible to avoid the smoke. 🤮
I absolutely abhor smoking and cannot stand the smell. When I was in Europe walking through the streets it was bad because so many people smoked there. I wore a mask because I have such a bad response to it.
Jimmasterjam@reddit
We had to go upstairs to make sure my dad put his cigarette out before he fell asleep and burned the bed.
Better_Resort1171@reddit
I know this sounds weird, but the only time my parents lit up was when we went to a drive in movie, to keep the skeeters away.. whether that worked I can't remember.
whistlepig4life@reddit
Grew up as a family of 5 in a 1 bathroom home. Our dad’s favorite past time was a cup of coffee. Cigarette. And the paper. On the toilet. You’d be in the shower and he’d come in a sit down and do his thing.
I spent years reminding my kids when they thought I was being mean or unfair of growing up like that.
TacoDeliDonaSauce@reddit
TRAUMA
MasterClown@reddit
My dad was a 2-3 pack a day smoker but quit cold turkey once he felt a lump in his neck. It turned out the lump was benign, thankfully,
But he stayed off of cigarettes for good anyway and became a PITA to his smoking friends, always whining and bitching about how bad it smelled. They didn't like his attitude, but they also admitted he was right :)
Rahawk02@reddit
My parents didn’t smoke but my friends did, so I went over their house.
LuceLeakey@reddit
I'm the only one of 8 siblings who didn't smoke, even though our parents smoked heavily until they died (of emphysema and tongue cancer, respectively.)
Just the slightest bit of smoke chokes me and I can't speak or breathe. It's repulsive.
I've never seen a realistic depiction of that time period on TV or in a movie because there are never enough people smoking, often enough, on any of them to reflect what it was really like.
mtcrick@reddit
Same with me. All 3 smoked, and one did smokeless tobacco too. They all quit, but sheesh.
gorkt@reddit
Yep, both parents were 2 pack a day smokers. I never knew anything different. Then I went away to college and came back for a weekend a month later. I could not believe how bad the house reeked. We all just were subjected to tons of second hand smoke.
GroundbreakingRip970@reddit
I was stunned in highschool when a friend mentioned how I always smelled like I smoked even though I didn’t. I had no idea.
Absotivly_Posolutly@reddit
It’s was just how everything was for me growing up. EVERY damn body smoked! Parents, Grandparents, family friends, neighbors… EVERYBODY!
My parents finally made the decision to start smoking outside of the house after my mom did some spring cleaning one year and there was an orange film over all the pictures hanging on the walls.
The upside to that is that I detest the smell of cigarette smoke. I never tried smoking and have always avoided going anywhere “smokey”.
My folks have since passed, but my wife’s people STILL smoke up their house and everything else. Everything smells SO bad! They think I’m an asshole because I won’t go in their home when we visit. I spent my whole childhood forced to breathe in that shit, no one can make me do it now.
alwaysforgettingmyun@reddit
Middle school gym teacher took me aside to tell me how dangerous it was for me to be smoking so young and refused to believe it was second hand from living with three smokers.
TheBaroness1934@reddit
My mom smoked a lot--one of my core memories is her chain smoking in the car with the windows rolled up. I have never touched a cigarette in my life--probably the greatest gift she gave me was my disgust for them.
kloco68@reddit
I’m exactly the same. I can’t stand it because my childhood is a haze of smoke. I used to get terrible headaches and nausea from riding in the car full of smoke windows up. I can’t stand the smell of smoke now.
FuturamaRama7@reddit
Yes! Thank you for not smoking.
Right-Eye-Left-Eye@reddit
In the winter when everything was closed up we had a kerosene heater and both of my parents were heavy smokers. I never smoked but my lungs are paying the price for living with all that toxicity.
PleaseStopTalking7x@reddit
My grandma smoked — a lot. Viceroys — and it’s the sensory trigger that fires my memories. She had a brick kitchen and I remember the smell of her house when I would open the door and walk in — warmth and cigarettes. She had crystal dish with Avon body powder and a pink puff in her bathroom and she’d balance a Viceroy in an ashtray on the countertop in the mornings. Avon fresh powder in a pink puff and an endless cigarette — a whole lot of safety and love.
dinnerwdr13@reddit
My dad was a 4 pack a day kind of guy from his teen years until the early 80's. I have no memory of him smoking. My mom on the other hand tried one cigarette and hated it.
However, everyone in our family smoked, a lot.
There was a special cabinet in the kitchen. When guests arrived, you would stop and grab an ashtray from the cabinet on your way to the door.
If my aunt stopped by for a visit, say 2-3 hours, some coffee, gossiping with my mom, a regular table ashtray would be full when she left.
A big family party meant several ashtrays getting filled, emptied, refilled. There would be layers of smoke in the house. The house would stink for a week or two after.
I grew up with that being normal.
HippieWhip@reddit
Yes. I still love the smell of matches.
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
Same or my zippo
texicali74@reddit
Oh yeah. My parents actually didn’t smoke, but even so, I explained to my kids not too long ago that back in the 70s and 80s, the entire world smelled like cigarette smoke and that they should be thankful that this is no longer the case. Unless they go to Europe. 👀
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
Or any casino
Scpj@reddit
My wife's parents smoked like that when she was growing up. She described how she always felt like she smelled bad and how it affected her confidence. My sister and I both shamed our dad into quitting because of the smell
Oryx1300@reddit
It was normal for sure. My mom didn't smoke, but my dad did and my sister and I started in our teens. When I was little, we had a 2 door hatchback and my sister and I would be in the backseat with the windows up while my dad smoked. I can't even imagine now how horrible it was. My dad had those huge glass ashtrays in every room and in his office at work (military, and it seemed like everyone smoked when we visited him on base).
therocketn00b@reddit
Our house fucking stunk. My dad would sit on the toilet smoking and reading for an hour at a time, and that was the worst smell of my childhood.
Sometimes, for fun, when I was little, we'd play firefighter, which meant I put on my fire helmet, he blew a big puff of smoke, and I'd fan it away.
To be fair, he was probably drunk though, so he wasn't thinking clearly.
Repulsive-Box5243@reddit
Both of my parents smoked. One quit in the late 80s, the other didn't, and was dead in 1999. The one that died of cancer. The one that died in '99 died of hart failure.
I smoked a lot, too until about 15 years ago. But, like others have mentioned, I didn't smoke inside. Even I thought it was intolerable.
Looking back, I am embarrassed how terrible I smelled all the time LOL.
TXtogo@reddit
Everyone always smoked around us, in the car.. shit my mom would smoke pushing her grocery cart around in the store. They all just threw their butts on the ground. They drove with a beer between their legs and a cigarette in one hand, the ashtray in the car overflowed with ashes and butts and it was all over the place.
We were white trash for lack of a more nuanced description of my upbringing
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
A roadie
Key-Contest-2879@reddit
We had huge pedestal ashtrays in the living room. Massive glass ashtrays in the dinning room. Small ashtrays on both end tables in my parents room.
For some reason they didn’t empty them daily. The living room ashtrays would fill up over the week and then get dumped.
The house, the car, everywhere reeked of cigarettes.
I never took to it. But I had a smokers cough through most of my childhood.
housevil@reddit
My parents never smoked but I had friends who's parents did. Inside too! I remember that there were a lot of people smoking inside back in those days. Now though, the people I know that do smoke, only do it outside. Don't know how it became common. Maybe due to the local restrictions on smoking inside businesses over the last 20 years. I'm grateful to see smoking Over All become more restricted.
WillBrink@reddit
Growing up in a small apartment in Brooklyn often full of smokers (my mother and her friends), being in cars with the windows closed with smokers, etc, I can relate.
SackBadger2024@reddit
I can relate. I grew up in the same environment. That specific shade o yellow makes me sick to this day.
Meekanado@reddit
Oh I forgot about that. My grandma hired my then boyfriend to paint her ceiling bc it was so brown and the color kept bleeding through. He did three or four coats and gave up.
She was a widow early in her life and spent most of her time sitting at the dining table watching CNN, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Chain smoking and playing solitaire with her Sanka coffee. Her cards were really soft and had deep finger indentations on them, and she refused to get a new deck. 🤣 Oh man I miss her.
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
My wife and I went to see a house (when we were looking back in 2002) and it was owned by a day sleeper, we walked in and yeah it was dripping off the popcorn ceiling. That visual has clearly stuck with me
Apprehensive-Log8333@reddit
I remember going to my grandmother's house for a visit, opening up my suitcase, and everything smelling like smoke. Even my stuffy. Of course, I started smoking at 15. I quit many times and now vape. I work with kids and even some 12 year olds vape now, I tell them they will regret it, but....I didn't listen as a teen, either
LadyNorbert@reddit
Not my parents, but my maternal grandparents. I spent a lot of time with them (they lived across the street) and it affected me heavily. I continued to be and live close to them as an adult and it continued to affect me. When they passed I was 30, and we had to clean out the house and we spent hours trying to scrub nicotine and tar off the walls.
Relatedly, I had many ear infections throughout my life, which they have since proven can be caused/made worse by exposure to secondhand smoke. I haven't had a single once since their deaths.
Beginning_Key2167@reddit
My dad was a pack a day smoker or more until he was 55.
I remember Saturday and Sunday breakfasts. Dad smoking and reading the paper. While eating and drinking instant coffee. Bacon, eggs and pancakes. My dad would just throw a whole pound of bacon in a pan. Cooked the eggs in the bacon grease.
All while smoking. He quit drinking and smoking at 55. He was seriously unhealthy.
I never smoked.
It was pretty funny looking back.
Ray_The_Engineer@reddit
Same deal for me, chainsmoker parents. I never picked up that habit though, and was happy to get out of that house when I went away to college.
MassholeForLife@reddit
My parents did smoke but aunts and uncles did I used to like the smell of their houses. I have issues.
ONROSREPUS@reddit
I was pretty lucky. My dad smoked but never in the house or in the family car. Nor would he smoke when someone else was in the pick up with him. If you were in the garage with him working he would be smoking or if he had a couple beers then he was really smoking.
MNPS1603@reddit
My parents smoked but luckily stopped around 1984 when was 7-8. My mom struggled with it and would smoke off and on after that, but she would only do it outside. I do remember before they quit we were driving somewhere, i could see the ashtray from the back seat, and it grossed me out so much, i swear that image sealed the deal and Ive never smoked a single cigarette. My friends parents smoked everywhere, house, car, they owned their own business they and half the employees smoked there into the mid 90’s. I remember Marlboro points - they bought bikes, tents, etc. her dad pointed at one of the bikes and said “that bike probably cost me ten years of my life!” He’s still alive though. 😂
hlmoore96@reddit
No, I agree and see where you’re going with this. I grew up around smokers; at home, friends houses, family homes, restaurants, etc. It seems like it was everywhere in the 70s and 80s. No one would dream of going outside to smoke or roll down windows in a car.
Now I’m almost shocked if I smell cigarette smoke inside. And I can smell it a mile away now. How do people afford it now??
dchusband@reddit
I remember taking long car rides and both parents chain smoked. I would crack the window and press my face to the opening like a caged animal.
Meekanado@reddit
No, but all my grandparents and some aunts and uncles did. My grandma’s car was always full of ash and dog hair. Smelled like wet musty cigarette dog, and in the winter she wouldn’t roll the windows down. It was so gross. She smoked menthols too.
Kitchen_Page9991@reddit
Grew up the same way. Parents smoked, grandparents smoked, I smoke.
I saw what it did to the insides of the house.
I never ever smoke inside. Smoking is gross, I know. It’s a hell of a habit to break. But I refuse to do it in the house. It’s my smoke free zone. Maybe weird, but that’s just me.
Dry_Ad7529@reddit (OP)
Oh prior to quitting when I was living on my own I’d go outside to smoke, which only half helped. My friends and i all smoked back then (I mean you could do it most places).
airckarc@reddit
We had a west facing door that had indoor wooden shutters. In the evening sun I’d move the shutters up and down and it looked like a laser light show shooting through the cigarette smoke.