The Shortest Resolution

The New Year's party at our house was in full swing. It was 1977, and my husband and I, and our party guests were all baby boomers. The house was full of neighbors, friends, coworkers. We were all in our 30s, and we were all two-income families, with two children, and had houses with recreation rooms. The song said it all: "We had freedom, we had money, in the land of milk and honey, kids of the baby boom!"

We were still full of the enthusiasm of youth that allowed us to play practical jokes like college kids, but mature enough to know we had the responsibility of good jobs, homes, and children that needed us. We worked hard, and we partied just as hard. Our party times were playful, full of laughter, and most often, full of lots of cigarette and cigar smoke.

In those days, the majority of us smoked. But I had a husband who despised smoking, the smell of the smoke, and the filth of the ashtrays. He had been known to screw ashtrays in cars tightly shut, but he had discovered, much to his chagrin, that you can't stop a smoker that way. So, for the few who did not smoke, they were stuck in rooms full of secondhand smoke, regardless of where we met as a group. Smoking was in, and at a party, smoking was extreme. The prevailing attitude was if it feels good, do it!

Oh, yes, life was good!

So at this New Year's party, of course the subject of resolutions was bantered about. Studies were beginning to reveal the dangers of smoking: the respiratory diseases like emphysema, the oral and lung cancer – even bladder cancer had been linked to smoking. The seed had been planted that maybe smoking was not a good thing.

For some, it made them determined to quit. Others would say, "I don't plan to live forever anyway. Big deal!" That New Year's Eve, one of the men, who was a smoker himself, challenged the smokers to quit at midnight. That would be the resolution. So they huffed and puffed as many cigarettes as they could between 11 and midnight. The air was blue with smoke, and the sound of coughing and hacking and hoarse voices.

I was a light smoker – I could take it or leave it – so I didn't get too involved. No point in me making a resolution I know I won't keep, I thought, and I carried on being the hostess. I had no intention of taking sides in this thing. That was not so for my husband.

Twelve o'clock came, and we watched the countdown in Times Square on television, did the customary ring of friends holding hands and singing of "Auld Lang Syne," and right on cue, all the smokers tossed their cigarettes into the wood stove. Cigarettes in pockets or purses were not touched, apparently, but any in sight were thrown into the fire.

"OK," said my husband, "if there is no smoking there will be no need for ashtrays!" He then collected every ashtray he could find, and threw those into the fire as well. No big loss, all dollar store items and the occasional souvenir, so they would not be missed, and certainly if no one was smoking they would not be needed.

And that was that. A group of non-smokers entered 1978 with a firm resolve that smoking is bad, and they had quit, once and for always. The party carried on, and the laughter and music were great, as I went to prepare food. The group settled down and talked about the past year, their plans for the New Year and all seemed to be on an even keel – that is, until about 10 minutes into the New Year.

Returning to the room around 12:10, I saw half a dozen grown men and women on their hands and knees with a poker, furiously trying to rescue an ashtray from the burning fire in the stove. The resolution had met with disaster when a friend lit a cigarette out of a pack she had in her purse. She never said that she had quit, she announced, and with that, the rest of the quitters turned into withdrawal freaks who were obsessed with getting a cigarette. One ashtray was rescued, the woman passed the cigarettes around and everyone said that they would start their resolution at noon on January 1st – later that day in fact!

My husband couldn't believe that he had witnessed the best-made and fastest-broken resolution of his lifetime. I just chuckled to myself. I had some kind of built in motor that allowed me to smoke a cigarette and then never touch another until whenever, the next week or next month. My friends could not do that, and the rest of the parties of the winter were smoke-filled, and often some of that smoke was mine.

Most of our group were healthcare professionals – nurses, doctors, and pharmacists. We saw the effects of smoking every day. But still it took a long time for the message that smoking kills to reach our dumb brains. Now we look back in dismay at the photos taken then, all of us holding a cigarette or cigar, feeling very invincible and totally cool, and we realize the photos make us look ridiculous. Such was the power of the cigarette.

But we have moved on, and now we are fighting different battles, of weight and high-cholesterol foods, and those resolutions we must keep, because now we are older, and somewhat wiser, and we have learned that if we make resolutions that last just 10 minutes, we will pay with our lives.

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