The Cooper Girls, Part 2

Author's warning: The following story contains graphic descriptions of the
effects of smoking and adult language and situations. It is not recommended
that you read it unless you are an adult and are not offended by the
aforementioned language. The opinions expressed in this story are solely
the author's and do not reflect on any individuals who carry the story on
their websites or archives. The people and situations portrayed in the
story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead
are coincidental. Proceed at your own risk and enjoy the story.

The Cooper Girls
PART 2: THE PROPOSITION

The next morning Rita woke up groggy. As usual, her mother chained through
several cigarettes as she prepared breakfast for her. Rita scowled at her
mother and mumbled "you don't even care about the second-hand smoke you're
exposing me to."

"Don't be smart with me young lady", Barbara answered.

"It looks like I'm the only smart person here.", Rita retorted.

"All right, off to school with you, young lady. I've got to drop off about
thirty resumes today." Barbara said as she sent Rita out to meet the school
bus.

After a seemingly endless day at school, Rita finally came home. Her mother
hadn'tarrived yet, so she made a sandwich and watched TV in the livingroom.
As she ate her sandwich, she noticed one of her mother's cigarette packs on
the coffee table. She picked it up and examined it. 'Twenty class A
cigarettes' it read. 'Surgeon General's Warning: smoking causes lung
cancer, emphysema and may complicate pregnancy'. 'How can she smoke these
things?' Rita pondered as she threw the pack down. She didn't even want to
ask if her mother smoked while she was pregnant. That would just infuriate
her to no end.

In less than an hour, her mother was home. She put away some groceries she
picked up, then made her way into the living room and sat down next to Rita.

"OK let's talk." Barbara began. "Smoking is indeed very bad for you. It
messes up your lungs, weakens your heart and shortens your life span. Those
are the bad things about it."

"There's nothing good about the..." Rita interrupted before her mother
shooshed her.

"Let me finish, Rita Lynn! ...As I was saying. Despite these facts, there
is a reason that millions and millions of people in the world smoke. We all
have to die sometime and a lot of the things that people do to enjoy life
are unhealthy. Take for example skiing. A lot of people have died skiing,
yet more people continue to do it because it is so very enjoyable. It's one
of the reasons some people live. If you took it away from them, life would
be colorless and not worth living. Mountain climbers are an even better
example. What they do is very, very dangerous, but danger like that truly
lets people know they're alive. Sometimes the things with the greatest risk
are the greatest things you could do with your life."

"Skiing and mountain climbing aren't anything like smoking." Rita interjected.

"That's true, but the concept that I'm trying to convey to you is the same.
Here's a better example. You like cake and candy, right? Well that's not so
bad when you're young, but when you get older, they're going to make you
gain weight and clog your arteries if you eat them too much. They're bad
for you, but could you imagine life without them? It wouldn't be so fun,
would it. Sure you COULD live without them, but would you choose to do that
if you had a choice? No. You just have to figure out how to have a bit
every now and then while still living a healthy, comfortable life. Do you
understand that?"

"That makes sense, but there IS no healthy amount of smoking." Rita replied.

"That's true, smoking is fundamentally different because you don't just
smoke a little bit every now and then. If you smoke, you do it all the
time. But think about this - smoking is a pleasure far greater than candy
and it takes many many years for you to become sick from it. If you ate as
much candy as a smoker smoked cigarettes, you would be really fat and sick
and wouldn't enjoy your life. Smoking lots of cigarettes, however, lets you
live a lifetime of pure joy and stay healthy until you're pretty old and
frail anyways. Imagine the chance to live a life in which you could eat
candy all day every day for years and years and you don't become fat and
sick until you're old. Wouldn't that be a much better life than not being
able to do that?"

"When you put it that way, I understand why you'd want to smoke, even
though I don't understand how it could possibly be that good, but what
about how gross it makes your lungs and arteries?" With that, Rita showed
her mother the picture of the healthy and unhealthy lungs in the booklet
she got at school.

"Well, Rita, what they don't let you in on in that book is the fact that
you'd never know your lungs looked like that when you're a smoker. It
doesn't hurt you to have smoker's lungs. In fact, there's no pain in a
smoker's chest at all. You'd never know that they looked like that if it
wasn't for photographs. All you feel is the daily pleasure you get from
smoking and the good feeling it gives you in your chest. I guarantee you
that the woman who had those lungs had a better feeling in her body than
the woman with the clean lungs."

"okay, so you say it feels really good, but I don't want you to die earlier
than you would."

"Than I would if WHAT? No one can tell how long they would live if they
didn't smoke. Some people live to their nineties even though they smoke
heavily. Some people die of cancer in their twenties or thirties even
though they don't smoke. You can never predict when your time will come. I
get lot's of exercise and try to eat as healthy as I can so that I can live
as long as I can. My only vice is smoking, which I love dearly and I choose
to face the consequences of that vice while being extra-healthy in all
other ways. I don't drink much and I never crave greasy and unhealthy food
- partially because of smoking. In that way, smoking might make me live
longer. All I have to do is accept how my lungs look, which is fine with
me."

"You've brought up a lot of good points, mom, but I still want you to quit.
I just can't get over what they showed me in class yesterday. From, what it
does to you, it's hard to believe smoking doesn't kill you right away. It
just puts poison into a very important part of your body and makes you
sick. It's just not right. It would mean a lot to me if you quit. Plus,
what about all the money you spend on cigarettes. I found out that they're
pretty expensive."

"First of all, the price I pay for cigarettes is well worth the comfort
they give me. Second, Robert, the man I've been dating - who you really
like, by the way - has been buying most of my cigarettes for me. He knows
what it's like to have to go without them and he'll keep buying them for me
as long as I need him to. You know what the problem is? You have no idea
what smoking feels like. If they taught you everything at school, I'm sure
they taught you that your lungs heal after a couple of years of not
smoking."

"That's true, mom, after about ten years of not smoking, the average
smoker's lungs heal to where they're almost the same as a non-smoker's
lungs. But you've been smoking too long for that to happen. If you stop
smoking now you'll be a lot healthier, but they'll still be pretty messed
up."

"The point I'm driving at is this. I want you to smoke a carton of
cigarettes just to show you how it feels to smoke. Before you answer no,
just hear me out. You're a very bright young girl and you've learned that
my smoking habit is unhealthy and that's troubling you a great deal. You'll
never be able to think of me as a completely good person unless you
understand exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing. I just know that about
you. After you've gotten used to smoking, I want you to re-evaluate whether
you want me to quit. If you still really want me to quit, I will, because I
care about you more than I care about my own pleasure. I just don't want to
have to stop doing what makes me so very happy unless you know what I have
to give up. After you're done, your lungs will easily heal."

"I don't know...What if I get addicted?"

"Don't worry hon, you may get a little addicted, but after only one carton
it's really not hard at all to quit. I wouldn't worry about that."

Rita sat silently as she pondered the proposition. She was smart enough to
know that this would be perhaps her only chance to get her mother to quit
and her mother was right that a brief one-carton smoking binge would be
cleared from her lungs in a couple of months.

"I'll do it, but I want you to promise me that you'll quit if I thought
about it afterwards and decided I still want you too."

"It's a deal" Barbara gleefully replied.

"okay, when do I have to start?"

"Why not now? Robert just bought me two cartons of cigarettes. I'll give
one of them to you. He'd understand."

"That's fine with me." Rita replied.

Barbara grabbed one of the fresh cartons and gave them to her daughter.
Realizing she didn't know what to do with it, She took it back, opened it,
then took out an individual pack and opened that too.

"Since this is your first cigarette ever, you won't inhale it yet. I want
you to draw it into your mouth and hold it there for a second before you
blow it out." Barbara said.

Rita watched her mother take the cigarette out, then ignite the tip as she
sucked on it. 'This is nuts' thought Rita. 'I'm going to be taught by my
mother to inhale dirty smoke into my lungs. What a crazy thing for a person
to do. The lungs are the last place smoke belongs. Mother nature put all
kinds of effort to put a complicated defense system into our lungs to keep
junk out and smokers just wreck the whole system, and for what? To breathe
air pollution? How good could that feel?

Barbara handed Rita the lit cigarette and showed her how to hold it. Once
she got that down, she told her to suck on the filter end until her mouth
was full and then blow it out. Once she did this, a bitter taste filled her
mouth and started to irritate her tongue and palette. She figured this must
be the cancer-causing chemicals irritating her. Rita's face made a sour
expression and she said "uugghh! that tastes awful. I don't know if I can
do this."

"Rita Lynn, you listen up" her mother cautioned, "smoking always tastes bad
at first, but every person on this Earth who has a few cigarettes
eventually likes it. Of course you're not going to like the first few puffs
and you'll cough from the first few inhales, but you'll never understand
the joy a smoker feels unless you let yourself get to the point where you
enjoy it. Primitive tribesman in South America have retched the first time
they tasted American candy bars because they'd never tried anything like
them before. Think of what they're missing out on if they don't make the
effort to get used to them."

She reluctantly tried again, noticing that the taste was not quite as
bitter and it wasn't quite as irritating this time. When she pulled the
cigarette away from her mouth to blow the smoke out, she noticed a brown
stain developing on the once-white filter. She thought with dismay about
the fact that this was the tar in the cigarette that turns smoker's lungs
brown. The filter had captured merely a portion of it and the rest was
meant to soak into a person's lungs. All kinds of tar just like that would
be successfully put into her own lungs by the time this little experiment
was through. She felt sick from that realization and a little scared, but
she reminded herself that mother nature's defenses would clear her lungs up
in no time.

After a few non-inhaled puffs, she stubbed the cigarette out under her
mother's guidance. She definitely noticed that each successive puff was a
little less displeasing than the last. Throughout the evening she smoked
three more cigarettes this way with the prospect in mind that she was to
learn to inhale tomorrow. She regarded the four spent butts that she had
smoked and contemplated the idea of her lungs soaking in the kind of tar
that stained the now dark filters. She did not go to sleep happy that night.

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