I quit for health reasons.

I never, ever expected to quit smoking, especially after forty years of huffing a pack a day. I loved lighting up from morning to evening and would always seek the “designated smoking” areas anywhere I went, even in airports where the glassed-in area reminded me of a smoky zoo cage. But on 6/23/07 I had a heart attack. While pacing back and forth on the front porch in a panic wondering if I should go to the hospital, I lit up my last cigarette knowing that I could never smoke again. Yes. I quit for health reasons. But I think a greater motivation was envisioning people at my funeral saying, “but, you know, he was a smoker.”