Smoking and Karma

Karma is, indeed, a bitch.

I'm getting my payback this past week, for all the times I smoked cigarettes around family and friends who were non-smokers.

I have been free of the habit for almost 10 years now, and have become one of the most vociferous anti-smokers on the planet. The smell makes me gag, and I can hardly believe I did that myself (and to myself) for 25+ years.

But, the worm has finally turned, and I am getting my payback.

My cabin is located at the end of a passageway. Across the hall from me, next door to me, and diagonally across from me, are all smokers. I'm surrounded.

Now, this shouldn't be a problem, because smoking is absolutely forbidden in cabins. However, there is a contingent of crew on board who just arrived last week, who feel that they are a law unto themselves when it comes to this. They are all fellow countrymen from a former Eastern Bloc country. They've lived under Communism, so a middle-aged Newfoundlander woman non-smoker who rants about it occasionally hardly puts the fear of God into them.

I know which one it is. It's the guy across the hall. He will go into his bathroom, which is about the size of two phone booths, and light up in there, thinking that the pathetic little ventilation system for the shower will get rid of all the evidence. It doesn't. It seeps into the area above the deckheads (ceilings on a ship) and crosses right over into my cabin, and others, I'm sure.

Any smoker, former or current, can just imagine the amount of smoke that is generated by a cigarette, over a 10 minute span, in an area the size of two phone booths. It's phenomenal, and intolerable. On my worst smoking day ever, I could not have tolerated sitting in there like that, no way.

So, this is what this guy does.

And the funny part (definitely not 'funny-ha-ha') is that our cabins are at the end of a passageway. Less than one foot / 30 cm from my cabin door is a door to the smoking deck outside. A beautiful, cruise-ship-like expanse of deck, where he could smoke, hell, he could burst into flames and bother no one. But no, he would prefer to smoke in a two-phone-booth sized bathroom. Just goes to show the stupidity of people who smoke. And yes, I was one of them. But I did have my epiphany, and I've never looked back.

So, how do you catch this guy in the act? The Captain knows, but can't do anything unless there's evidence. He can hardly charge into this guy's cabin every time he's in the bathroom. And another funny thing is that this guy denies he smokes. At all. He claims to be a total non-smoker. The only one he's fooling is himself.

Anyway, I'm sick to death of it, and just want to get the hell home out of here, where I can enjoy the smell of freshly fallen snow (lots of it, I hear) and my sister's roast beef dinner on Sunday mornings (total bliss) and chocolate chip cookies in the oven, and fresh latte from my new, still-in-the-box Tassimo coffee maker, and all those other smells that make life worth living, and are not in any way similar to the gagging horribleness of smoking.

My sincerest apologies to those who endured my smoking. I have learned.

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