Sarah In Kindergarten – part 1
“Wake up, honey! It’s time to get ready for school.”
Sarah opened her sleepy eyes to the sound of her mother’s
throaty smoker’s voice. The familiar smell of the sweet
smoke from the ever-present Marlboro Red dangling from
Lori’s lips brought a smile to Sarah’s face. She sat up in
her little bed and started coughing. It was a routine now
familiar to Sarah. She started each morning with a round of
coughing as her five-year old lungs tried to flush the
previous day’s deposits of tar and nicotine. Her coughing
was like music to the ears of her parents, Mark and Lori.
It told them that all their hard work had paid off
beautifully. It filled them with pride to know that their
young daughter was a confirmed and addicted cigarette
smoker at the tender age of five. Lori was ecstatic to know
that Sarah’s lungs had never been given a chance to develop
into fresh, pink, healthy lungs. She was determined to see
that her daughter did not miss out on a single potential
moment of smoking pleasure.
Sarah had started taking drags from her mother’s cigarettes
as a newborn baby, while being nursed. She would alternate
between the nicotine-saturated breast milk from her
mother’s mammary glands and the rich smoke from her
mother’s high-tar cigarettes. While baby Sarah was sucking
on her mother’s nipple, Lori would draw heavily on her
cigarette. With smoke pouring from the end of the filter
she would gently remove her nipple from Sarah’s mouth and
replace it with the filter of her cigarette. Sarah never
missed a beat as her natural sucking motion drew her
mother’s sweet smoke into her tiny body. At first she would
cough the smoke out. But it didn’t take Sarah long to learn
to distinguish between nipple and filter, between milk and
smoke. After accidentally inhaling the smoke a few times,
she learned that she liked it. Her eyes would light up with
joy when she felt her mother’s filter in her mouth. From
her first inhale, she was hooked. She smoked her first full
cigarette at the age of six months. She began smoking five
cigarettes per day on her first birthday. And, at the
unbelievable age of three, she had started smoking a full
pack of Marlboro Gold 100s per day. Sarah had just turned
five and was now smoking a minimum of thirty cigarettes per
day. And Sarah didn’t just go through the motions of
smoking. She inhaled every drag down to the bottom of her
blackened, underdeveloped lungs and smoked every cigarette
right down to the filter. Never had there been a more
natural born smoker. Sarah coughed once more, cleared her
throat, and said, “I need smoke, Mommy.”
“Oh, sorry, honey,” said Lori. “Here, have some of this.”
Lori took a deep drag from her Marlboro, removed the
cigarette from her lips, inhaled deeply with her familiar
wheezing sound, and handed the cigarette to Sarah. Sarah
placed the dark, brown filter of her mother’s half-smoked
cigarette between her tiny lips. She sucked on the filter
as if her little life depended on it. Her tiny cheeks
indented deeply as the tip of the cigarette glowed like a
bright, red cherry. She removed the cigarette from her
mouth, parted her lips slightly, and inhaled heavily
through her mouth. A large ball of thick, dense smoke
danced momentarily in Sarah’s little mouth and then
disappeared as it was sucked into Sarah’s tiny, dark lungs.
Her little chest expanded noticeably as the smoke filled
her lungs. A smile crossed Sarah’s face as she closed her
eyes and held the smoke deep in her lungs. She loved the
feeling of the day’s first hit of nicotine. Without
exhaling, she placed the cigarette to her tiny lips again.
As she drew deeply on the cigarette, the smoke from her
first drag began rushing out of her nostrils. Lori flushed
with excitement as she vicariously enjoyed the cigarette
along with her daughter.
“Oooo, doesn’t that feel good, honey?” said Lori, knowing
only too well the incredible extra pleasure that the day’s
first cigarette brings.
“Yes! It feels so good, Mommy, but why do I cough so much?”
asked Sarah.
“That means you’re a real smoker, Sarah, just like Mommy
and Daddy. If you don’t cough in the morning, what does
that mean?” asked Lori.
“I know. It means I’m not smoking enough,” said Sarah as
she took another cheek-hollowing drag.
“That’s right. And what happens if you don’t smoke enough?”
“My lungs will start to turn pink,” said Sarah, deeply
inhaling another drag while still retaining the previous
drag in her tiny, black lungs.
“And we don’t ever want that to happen, do we?” asked Lori.
“No, Mommy. I want my lungs to get nice and black, like
yours. I want them to always be filled with smoke,” said
Sarah, exhaling thick bursts of smoke from her mouth with
each word spoken.
“That’s right, honey. Because that’s what makes us feel so
good and yummy inside,” said Lori. “That’s what makes the
warm and tingly feeling we get when we hold the smoke deep
in our lungs. And that’s what makes you such a special
little girl. You’re lungs are blacker than any other little
girl’s.” Sarah smiled as she took another deep drag from
her mother’s cigarette. “And how do we make our lungs
blacker and blacker?” asked Lori.
“We have to smoke more and more every day,” said Sarah as
she finished off her mother’s cigarette with a deeply
inhaled triple-pump.
“That’s right, baby, and you’re making wonderful progress,”
said Lori, reaching for the opened pack of Marlboro 100s on
Sarah’s nightstand. She lit one of Sarah’s cigarettes, took
a quick double-pump from it, and handed the cigarette to
Sarah. “Here, honey. You’d better have another. That was
only half a cigarette.”
Sarah’s eyes twinkled as she inhaled deeply from her own
beloved Marlboro Gold. She preferred her 100s over her
mother’s king-sized Reds. For one thing, they lasted
longer. But she also liked the way the long cigarette
looked between her tiny fingers. And she loved the gold and
white pack that they came in.
“As you get older, you will cough more and more–just like
Mommy,” said Lori.
“Wow! That’s a lot,” said Sarah. “Some mornings it seems
like you will never stop coughing. I hope I can smoke
enough to be just like you, Mommy. I want to be just like
you.” Her cheeks indented as she took another long drag
from her cigarette.
“I’m so proud of you, sweetie. At the rate you’re going, it
won’t be long before you’re coughing even more than I am,”
said Lori. “I want you to undrestand that soon you will
wake up coughing in the middle of the night and want to
smoke a cigarette very badly. It has already happened to
you a few times, like last week, remember? As you get
older, it will happen more and more often. Eventually you
will wake up coughing two or three times every night and
smoke a few cigarettes just to make the coughing stop.
That’s what I do every single night. Some nights you will
hardly sleep at all. That doesn’t scare you, does it,
sweetie?”
“Oh, no, Mommy. That would mean I could smoke even more
than I do now. I want to smoke as much as you do.” Sarah
took another long drag, inhaled deeply, and thought for a
moment. She said, “Mommy, why can’t I run fast like the
other kids.”
“Well, we’ve talked about this before,” said Lori. “That’s
another sign that you’re a real smoker, honey. The other
kids don’t have smoke in their lungs like you do. But, they
don’t know what they’re missing out on, do they? They don’t
know how lucky you are. Their lungs are pink. They’re not
black like yours. The longer you smoke, the blacker your
lungs will get. And the blacker your lungs get, the harder
it will be for you to run, the harder it will be for you to
climb stairs. You know how you always start breathing very
fast after you climb our stairs?”
“Yes, Mommy. It makes my heart feel funny. It starts
beating real fast,” said Sarah as she took another drag
while simultaneously exhaling through her nostrils.
“Well, as you get older, it will become harder and harder
for you to climb stairs. You will have to stop after a few
steps and rest for a minute, just like Mommy does. When you
get to be my age, errr….if you get to be my age, you
probably won’t be able to climb stairs at all, just like
Grandma.”
“Will I get to ride in a wheelchair and wear a funny mask
like Grandma wears?” asked Sarah.
“That’s her oxygen mask, honey. Grandma has a disease
called emphysema. That’s what happens when your lungs get
really, really black. That may happen to you some day…if
you don’t get lung cancer first. But that shouldn’t scare
you. Emphysema is just another sign that you are a real
smoker. It means you’ve given your lungs as much smoke as
they can handle, and that’s what we want, isn’t it? Until
we reach that point, we have to keep smoking more and more.
And once we have reached that point, it doesn’t mean we
can’t smoke even more, still. It hasn’t stopped Grandma
from smoking, has it?”
“No way! She smokes even more than you do, Mommy.” Sarah
smiled and took another drag from her half-finished
cigarette. She inhaled the smoke deep into the dark
recesses of her young lungs.
“I think you’re right, sweetie, Grandma is a wonderful
smoker. She certainly loves her cigarettes.” Lori looked
Sarah in the eyes and said, “Does it bother you that you
can’t run fast?”
“Well, sometimes the other kids laugh at me,” said Sarah.
She looked at her cigarette for a moment, placed it between
her lips, and sucked until the insides if her cheeks almost
touched each other. “Sometimes they tease me about the
funny noises I make after I try running.” Amazingly, Sarah
had already developed a slight wheeze from her advanced
smoking habit. It became even more pronounced when she
became winded.
“You know, if you want to,” said Lori, “you can run just as
fast as the other kids. You can run up and down the stairs
without any trouble at all. You wouldn’t make those funny
noises anymore. But it would mean you would have to stop
smoking. You would have to let your lungs get fresh and
pink. You would never be able to fill them with cigarette
smoke again. You would be just like all the other kids. Do
you think you would like that?”
A momentary look of anxiety passed over Sarah’s face. She
thought about it for a second, dragged deeply on her
cigarette, and said, “I don’t care if I can’t run, Mommy. I
don’t care if I can’t climb stairs. I don’t mind coughing
in the morning. It always makes me feel like smoking more,
anyway. So do those funny sounds I make when my heart
starts beating really fast. I don’t want to be like the
other kids. I want to smoke, Mommy. Please don’t make me
stop.” Sarah took another exceptionally long drag, pulled
the smoke down to the very bottom of her tar-coated
five-year old lungs, and held it there, luxuriating in the
warmness of the smoke.
Lori said, “As long as I’m alive, I promise that no one
will ever try to make you stop smoking, Sarah, unless you
want to.” Tears welled up in Lori’s eyes as she saw herself
in Sarah. “It’s in our genes, honey. We were born to be
smokers.”
“In our jeans?” said Sarah with a puzzled look.
Lori laughed and said, “That just means that we love
smoking more than anything else in the world. No one can
ever change that. Is that how you feel, honey?”
“Yes. Mommy. I love to smoke. I love it more than anything.
I love my cigarettes. I don’t ever want to stop smoking.”
Lori nodded her head in silent approval. She let Sarah take
a few more deeply inhaled drags and said, “Well, that’s
enough talking. You’d better hurry up and get ready for
school now.”
It was Sarah’s first day of kindergarten. Sarah was looking
forward to starting school with her friends, but Lori was
filled with anxiety. She wondered if Sarah would be able to
go four hours without a cigarette. Lori, herself, would be
climbing walls after just twenty minutes. Going four hours
without nicotine seemed almost incomprehensible to her.
Sarah had not gone more than an hour without smoking, other
than while sleeping, since she had turned two. Lori had
tried to prepare Sarah. She had told her that she would not
be able to smoke in school. She had tried to explain to her
young cigarette smoker that, incredibly, some parents do
not allow their children to smoke cigarettes. Sarah found
the notion somewhat bizarre, but said she understood. She
said she thought she could last through an entire school
day without smoking. Lori hoped she was right, but knew
that it would be rough for a five-year old nicotine addict
who had never before been denied a cigarette when her body
craved one.
Mark walked into the room just as Sarah was exhaling
another deeply inhaled drag. He picked up his daughter and
gave her a good morning kiss. The hot smell of nicotine on
her young smoker’s breath gave Mark a familiar stiff
feeling in his pants. He said, “Is my little smoker ready
for her first day of school?” Sarah nodded her head and
grinned as she took one final drag from her now spent
cigarette.
Mark looked at his tar-filled wife who had just lit up a
fresh Marlboro Red. She looked as sexy as she had the first
day he had met her. He grabbed her and placed his mouth
over hers as she began to exhale. They locked for several
seconds in a deep, smoky kiss. Smoke began pouring from
their nostrils. Mark could easily have ripped Lori’s
clothes off and gone at it, hot and heavy, right on the
spot. But he knew this was not the right time. He had to
get ready for work and Sarah had to get ready for school.
Mark still marveled at his unparalleled good fortune. There
was rarely a limp moment for him when he was home with
these two incredible smoking females. Marrying Lori was the
best thing that had ever happened to him. If the two of
them had spent their lives together, alone, he would have
considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the
earth. But, to be blessed with a daughter like Sarah seemed
like more good luck than one man deserved. It was like
winning the lottery, being set for life, and then winning
the lottery again. Mark lived in a near constant state of
bliss.
“Maybe we should give Sarah a nicotine patch,” said Mark to
his smoke-filled lover. “Maybe that would help her get
through the day.”
“I thought about that,” said Lori. “But then her body would
get used to the patch being there. We would have to give
her one every day. Let’s just see if her little body can
adjust itself to her new school schedule. I’m sure it will
be rough on her at first, but she will get used to it. At
her age, she is much more adaptable than we are.”
“Come on, Sarah. Let’s get dressed.” Lori tried to hurry
her daughter along. “You still have to eat breakfast and
brush your teeth. Then I’ll walk with you to the school
bus.”
Lori dressed Sarah in a neat little blouse and skirt for
her first day of school. She let Sarah smoke a cigarette as
she combed her daughter’s hair. She said, “Inhale deeply,
honey. I’ll let you smoke one more cigarette after
breakfast, but that will be all until after school, OK?”
“OK, Mommy. I know I can’t smoke in school,” said Sarah
with a long talking exhale.
“I know it will be hard for you. You will start to feel
like you really want a cigarette. You know how you feel
when you first wake up in the morning–how much you really
need a cigarette?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sarah, nodding her head, as she took an
extra deep inhale from her Marlboro 100.
“Well, you will probably start to feel that way while you
are sitting in school,” said Lori as she lit up another
fresh cigarette of her own. “But you will just have to wait
until you get home to smoke. Do you think you can do it?”
“I can do it, Mommy,” said Sarah, double-pumping her
cigarette as she shuddered at the very thought of the
cravings to come.
“You’re a very special girl, Sarah,” said Lori proudly,
mimicking her daughter with a double-pump of her own. Sarah
smiled, showing her already yellowing baby teeth which had
not yet begun to fall out.
At breakfast Sarah ate a bowl of Cheerios and a piece of
buttered toast. “OK, honey, smoke one more cigarette. It’s
almost time to go,” said Lori.
Sarah took a bite of toast and placed a fresh Marlboro 100
between her thin, pale lips. The long cigarette looked even
longer dangling from Sarah’s frail little mouth. In one
expert motion she grabbed her butane lighter and flicked it
to life with all the dexterity of a seasoned adult smoker.
She held the lighter near the end of her cigarette,
shielding the flame with her free hand. Her tiny cheeks
indented as she sucked through the clean, white filter. The
flame jumped from her lighter onto the end of her cigarette
as thick, high-tar smoke filled Sarah’s little mouth. She
removed the cigarette from her lips and set it into her
little Disneyworld ashtray. With the unchewed bite of toast
still in her mouth, Sarah inhaled the large ball of smoke
deep into her underdeveloped lungs. She started chewing her
toast as the toxic smoke permeated her tar-stained lung
tissue. She swallowed the toast as the nicotine in her
lungs started working its way into her tiny blood vessels.
Without having yet exhaled, Sarah took another bite of
toast and started chewing. As she swallowed the second
bite, she exhaled two twin streams of smoke through her
nostrils.
“Hurry up, honey! We’re late. We have to go,” said Lori.
Sarah finished her cigarette in less than three minutes
with a series of double – and triple-pumps. “I’m ready,
Mommy,” said Sarah as she crushed out her cigarette in her
little ashtray.
“Go get your backpack. It’s got all of your school supplies
in it,” said Lori.
Sarah ran to her bedroom, exhaling smoke the whole way, and
grabbed her vinyl backpack which was decorated with
pictures of Sesame Street characters. Instinctively, Sarah
grabbed the open pack of Marlboro 100s from her nightstand
and stuffed it into her backpack. She had long ago trained
herself to never go anywhere without her cigarettes. Like
mother, like daughter.
Sarah ran back to the kitchen and said, “I’m ready, Mommy,”
a final wisp of smoke exiting her mouth as she finished
speaking.
“All right. Let’s see if we can catch that bus,” said Lori.
Sarah stepped outside, ready to face the new challenges in
her suddenly changing smoke-filled world.
To be continued…