I recently started smoking again. That was a brilliant move on my part. It’s okay to congratulate me. Go ahead. I feel like a newcomer at an AA meeting admitting my dirty little secret. I used to smoke in college, back when Joe Camel was a sex symbol wearing a Speedo draped across print ads. We thought he was sexy with his swollen abs and massive humps. I have to hand it to advertisers who can make girls lust over a dusty, spitting desert mammal used for transportation purposes. I successfully kicked the habit upon growing up and entering the real world.
I didn’t start back because I was stressed out, or because of great sex, or even to lose weight. I did it to preserve the appearance of my kitchen table … because in case you didn’t know, nicotine is better for wood than Murphy’s Oil Soap or Pledge. It’s a little secret that the government is trying to keep you from finding out. Yeah, they preach cancer, emphysema, and heart disease, but they don’t tell you about the heavenly shine that cigarette ashes properly applied can bring out in your wood furniture. So, here’s how it happened, and let me tell you, I’m not proud if this. But for some things, like furniture refinishing, you have to make sacrifices and rearrange your priorities. I have this beautiful antique farm table. Don’t be jealous. I’m not bragging. It’s the only piece of furniture I own that didn’t come from Big Lots or a garage sale, or a garage sale of Big Lots furniture. Oh, I also have a couch set that came from Bargain Kuntry Furniture Liquidators. This store had twenty-seven going-out-of-business sales, before it actually WENT out of business. I guess they cried wolf one too many times and people didn’t buy it. (Pun intended) Anyway, this farm table is made from some gorgeous, exotic wood from a tree that’s probably now extinct.
My gorgeous table of such rare wood doesn’t seem to hold up to anything. You can’t set anything down on it that’s too hot, cold, wet, spicy, or made with Spam as the main ingredient. If you even breathe too hard, it’ll dull the finish.
But, the biggest problem of all was white spots. Have you ever had a white ring on a table? Yeah, they’re hard to remove. So, one day, my son Andrew came in from swimming and threw his pool towel down on the table. As soon as I came in, saw the towel that was almost dry, and yanked it down, there was a huge white spot hovering right in the center, where the main dish would sit, if I ever cooked. I’m talking about a fluffy cumulous cloud that had settled into the wood grain, unpacked its bags and was lounging with a margarita and the channel changer. It wasn’t going ANYWHERE. No flower arrangement or placemat could cover it. It looked like one of those splotches picked up by Ghost Hunters EVP. I pulled out the oil soap and the scratch cover and the whole nine yards. Nothing touched it. So, being a pretty resourceful gal, I decided I was NOT going to be defeated by this wood grain stain.
I got in my car, headed to the library and set up shop in the wood furniture resource section. After thumbing through thirty-three books, written by sixty-something-year-old men wearing flannel shirts and thick plastic rimmed glasses from the early eighties, I found the right book. Why is it that we trust men wearing flannel to know a thing or two about do it yourself projects? As if every wood working apprentice learns the dress code early by their mentor reprimanding them, “Son, you cain’t sand that coffee table wearing a cotton t-shirt! Get your flannel on, boy. Take pride in your work!”
I chose a book that has an entire chapter dedicated to cleaning tough white spots out of wood. Shockingly enough, it said that the best remedy is to mix cigarette ashes with vegetable oil or mayonnaise. Not fireplace ashes, or cremation ashes, or burnt sacrifice ashes or burn the evidence ashes. Cigarette ashes! I had to read it twice to make sure I wasn’t just having nicotine-induced delusions revisited from fifteen years ago. But, it was right there in black and white, cigarette ashes made into a paste with vegetable oil, and an adequate amount of scrubbing would remove the stain. You wouldn’t want to use it in your deviled eggs or cole slaw, but for white stains, it was the perfect recipe. I had mayonnaise and I had vegetable oil, but I didn’t seem to have any full ashtrays lying around. I don’t have any friends who smoke. I don’t even have any enemies who smoke. And it’s not like you can just run to Kroger and purchase a bag of cigarette ashes. I thought about driving down to a bar in my soccer mom SUV with my two small children strapped into their car seats and asking Thelma, the cocktail waitress for the contents of a few ashtrays, but decided against it. I thought about trying to discreetly empty the contents one of those cigarette extinguisher towers outside Wal-Mart into my purse. But those things are heavier than they look and I couldn’t even lift it over my head. So, I did what any dedicated owner of ONE nice piece of furniture would do, I marched into Wal-Mart with my two boys, filled the cart with household necessities and then ever so modestly slunk to the only checkout that sells cigarettes. For an image-conscious, Christian mother, this is the equivalent of taking your kids into the porn section of a movie store. When it was my turn to check out, I bowed my head low and whispered to the cashier, “I need some cigarettes.” ‘What kind?” asked the cashier through her three remaining teeth. “Oh any kind will do, I guess. I don’t know anything about them,” I said with all the feigned innocence of a woman buying condoms. She gave me an impatient roll of the eyes; there were seven people having nic fits in line behind me. So, I blurted out “MARLBORO MENTHOL LIGHT 100’s IN A BOX, NOT A SOFT PACK, please, but I can assure you as a healthy mom who cares about my children and the environment, these are NOT for me. You see I have this table …” “Here ya go,” the cashier interrupted in a voice ravaged enough to frighten even Joe Camel as she tossed the cigs at me in full view of my impressionable children. I grabbed the goods and shoved them into my purse as if hurrying to conceal a weapon. (Well, they sort of are a weapon, if you want to get technical about it).
All the way home, I lectured Andrew and Jack about the perils of smoking, assuring them that Mommy wasn’t a smoker, would never be a smoker, and was just buying this pack to get enough ashes to try this ridiculous stain removal routine. I told them all about lung cancer, and death rates and eleven minutes off your life with every cigarette and bad breath and phlegm and wrinkles and smokers being socially undesirable. I explained the Marlboro purchase as a martyrous act to keep from having to buy a new kitchen table. Secretly, though, I was looking forward to my project. A devil had already materialized on my left shoulder urging me to light up as soon as the groceries were safely in the cupboard and Andrew and Jack safely in front of SpongeBob. Where was the angel on the right? Was it his day off? Was he at a shoulder angel’s union meeting? Or was I just ignoring him?
Sure enough, I followed the shoulder devil’s advice, carefully saving every ash in my stain removal cup. It did occur to me that I could light the cigarettes and just let them burn down to the butt. But I extinguished that thought the moment it arose. The first week, I smoked only one a day, diligently keeping my kitchen table’s purpose in mind. By Sunday, I had enough ashes to work with. So, I made the paste, cleaned the table; and the spot, for the most part, disappeared just as Flannel Bob Vila said it would. But what to do with the leftover cigarettes? I couldn’t just throw them away! That’d be wasteful! And there are starving children in Bangladesh who would love to pick up a life threatening habit. It would only be right for me to finish what I’d started. I’m a big believer in finishing what I start. It’s a sign of determination and moral character.
When the pack was finally done, I vowed NO MORE, unless another white spot should appear. But then, by the next Saturday, a bad case of PMS hit that only a cigarette (or twenty) could remedy. For the most part, I was smoking only under the cover of night, or when the boys were at friends’ houses. I’ve really encouraged them to be social lately.
After Pack Number Two was empty, I once again shook my fist in the air Scarlett O’Hara style and said “never again, unless a white spot!” But then, I started feeling sorry for myself because my husband was out of town on an extended business trip. Being a single mom would be much more tolerable if I had a couple of cigarettes, plus eighteen more. I’m now in the middle of that pack. Number Three. I should go and throw them out right now. I’m feeling powerful. I think I can do it. My mouth tastes like a cesspool. My right hand smells just as bad. I think it’s time to flush this habit, white spots or not. My shoulder angel is applauding me like a motivational speaker spouting affirmations, while its devil counterpart warns, “You’ll just be buying another pack next week. Why waste these?”
I can do this. I’m strong. I don’t want to smell like a smoker friendly AA meeting forever. I’ll kick this habit. I WILL. Again.
That was three months ago. I’m proud to say that I’ve been smoke free ever since ... and very careful not to get any new white spots on my kitchen table.