I miss the smoke we had when we went to indoor weddings. As a kid, the smoke would be this high cloud just out of reach, obscuring the other end of the room where the adults were talking. The tables with the thickest smoke were where the men sat in intellectual poses, discussing heavily politics. It gave an air of grandeur to it, and when the disco lights would turn, they’d light up the smoke clouds to give off a pink/red thunder vibe.

Yeah sure, we have smoke machines now, but it typically hugs your knees and doesn’t rise much, giving off a different look. It also doesn’t seem much fun for kids, who I guess just see it as eye-level fog.

When I moved to Tennesse from Virginia, it was still legal to smoke on restaurants in VA. The day we moved we got into town after most places were closed, and we were starved, so stopped at a waffle house. Lit up a cigarette at the table and the waitress freaked the fuck out. Lol. Waffle house and smoking are so intrinsically linked my head that now, years after quitting, I still crave cigarettes whenever I see that fucking sign, and I genuinely almost never crave cigarettes. They stink and I don’t miss them. But it was just… The place you smoked and ate hash browns. I can go to bars without associating them with cigs as much as I do waffle house.

I’m too young to have known that in my home country but I remember doing my Erasmus in a country where people were still smoking in bars.

It felt gross, if I did not wash my clothes and hair directly after a night out my bedroom would smell like cigarettes for days.

I remember in Maryland around that time places like Denny’s would have areas walled off with plexiglass in the dining area for smokers.

I grew up in a home with heavy smokers, so I really had no chance at all as a kid. I have childhood memories of being in a smoke filled car with windows rolled up. Didn’t even have to crack the windows because there were ashtrays built into the cars of that era. And then if the windows were open or cracked, there was another danger. I lost count of how many times I had ashes fly back into the back of the car directly into my eyes and mouth, or the lovely feeling of a burning “cherry” searing into my forehead.

The real question is how old were you when you realized there was no N in restaurateur. My decades were at least several.

My dad used to smoke when we went over to his house on weekends and I hated how gross ashtrays looked :(

And how my hair and clothes would just smell of smoke even though I didn’t smoke at all - especially when we went to my grams house in the summer.

This is how my folks dropped me off everywhere.

I remember boarding a short regional flight in northern Ontario in the mid 80s. We were placed in a non-smoking section, while the row behind us was smoking. I remember seeing those little ashtray drawers on every seat and every single one no matter smoking or non smoking had cigarette butts and ash in them.

And wherever you walked, malls, stores, grocery stores, banks, schools, hospitals, banquets, dinners, gatherings … everywhere, anywhere … someone or a few people were smoking.

People were considered weird or rude or just plain stupid if they asked someone not to smoke in public.

Jokes on you, that smoke wall was the only thing that was protecting Harambe.

I remember even as a kid hearing about all the backlash from restaurants about smoking bans. How they’d have no customers, etc. And none of that happened. It’s the first time I realized that a lot of business owners are idiots, that having a seemingly successful business doesn’t even require understanding the business or customers.