My lungs filled with hot Magna... yes Magna

It was late at night. Brian Sipp and I were riding our bikes down by the Alpha Beta in Diamond Bar. As we rode by one of the automatic doors, Brian stopped, reached inside, and grabbed a pack of cigarettes - Magna Reds to be exact. It was done very quickly and no one saw him except for me. I hung out with Brian because he was a good influence on me. I know this sounds strange, but I was such a good kid and so dorky, that I needed someone like Brian to loosen me up. Despite stealing the cigarettes, he wasn’t a bad kid.

We rode our bikes about a couple of blocks to my old elementary school and parked our bikes behind one of the portables. He packed the cigarettes, unwrapped the pack, and offered me the first one. I took it. My mother had pounded the “don’t smoke” speech into my head for so many years. Almost all of my relatives had died from lung cancer. So why was I taking it? Brian flicked the lighter and held it up for me. I inhaled and my lungs filled with smoke. I was 15. Did I like it? Yes and no. I hated the taste, smell, and feel of the smoke. I liked it because I was doing something wrong. I liked it because I was doing this at my old elementary school where I was such a good kid. I liked it because it made me more acceptable to Brian’s other friends that smoked and I wanted to hang out with. We smoked a couple more at the school that night before heading home. I remember going straight upstairs to take a shower. I couldn’t let my parents smell the smoke on me.

Brian let me keep the pack, which was dumb because I knew I wouldn’t smoke by myself. It took only a couple of days for my mom to find the cigarettes hidden so deftly under my pillow. I apologized profusely, told them I did it out of curiosity, and broke all of the cigarettes in half. I was smoking again later that week. I continued to smoke casually until I went to Germany where I increased my habit to a pack or two a day. At that time Germany was consuming 11% of the worlds tobaco. Not bad for a country the size of California.

I finally quit on February 22, 1993. I was at a birthday party for one of my friends, smoked several packs, and only got 2 hours of sleep before getting up to go somewhere with my dad. I felt like crap and even though I knew it probably wasn’t the cigarettes, I blamed them anyway. My parents never knew I smoked until I told them last year.