A Mommy Story

On my morning drive to Cordy’s preschool, I was stopped at a obscenely long traffic light. I glanced over to the car beside me. There was a boy in the passenger seat – couldn’t have been older than seven or eight – and a woman I will assume is his mom was driving the car. In her hand was a cigarette, and the only ventilation was the two inch crack in the mom’s window needed to flick her ashes into the street. I saw the boy coughing, but the mom continued to talk on her Bluetooth, seemingly unconcerned.

I understand that smoking is a tough habit to break, and that some don’t want to break their habit. I also know that many smokers are smart people who comprehend the dangers of smoking, not only to themselves but to others around them. Secondhand smoke is no longer a theoretical risk – it’s been proven to cause real health problems.

But forcing your kid to sit in a smoke-filled car? Not cool. In some places, it’s considered child abuse and against the law. I don’t care how cold it is outside. Two inches from one window is not remotely close to enough ventilation. The kid was coughing – sure, he could have had a cold, but even if it was a cold, do you think the smoke was helping his lungs recover from that cold? If she’s smoking, then by default he’s smoking, too. Does he get to drink if she has a cocktail?

This is a touchy subject for me because I was that kid when I was younger. My mom didn’t smoke, but my aunts did, and they would routinely smoke in the car when we traveled. If it was warm out, they’d have the windows down, but in the winter? Two inches. And I coughed. A lot.

Turns out, I have a bit of a reaction to cigarette smoke. After being in an enclosed space with smokers for even an hour, I spend the next week in misery with all of the symptoms of the worst cold you can imagine. It’s why I always wanted to sit on the patio at the local bars in college, and why I generally avoided clubs. I don’t like feeling sick for days all because someone else wanted their nicotine fix.

There are plenty of considerate smokers out there. I have friends who smoke, and it doesn’t bother me. They are always polite, smoking outdoors and never if I’m in the car. I know other smokers who have kids, and they never smoke in the house or car because of their kids. They will go out of their way to keep their kids away from the smoke. Some quit before kids.

I couldn’t help but stare at this woman and her child as we stopped at the next light and were beside each other again. She made no effort to blow the smoke towards her two inch vent to the outside, and she didn’t seem to notice her child looked miserable. Was her desire for a cigarette so strong that she’d rather put her child’s health at risk rather than waiting the 15 minutes (at most) it would take to drop the kid off at school?

I’ll admit I’m completely and utterly biased. If you want to smoke, that is completely OK with me. Cigarettes are legal, and smoking them is legal. I don’t have a problem with it until you start affecting someone else’s health, especially a child’s. The lungs of a child are especially sensitive to the effects of secondhand smoke, and they are more vulnerable because they often have no ability to escape the smoke. And while I can simply avoid a person who is an inconsiderate smoker, a child can’t choose to go somewhere else because their parents are smoking around them.

At least give your kids the choice to smoke when they’re eighteen. Don’t decide for them before they’re even out of diapers.