Quittin' Time

By Mike Keefe-Feldman, Missoula Independent. Posted October 11, 2004.

I was returning to the Independent office in Kalispell after looking into a news story in Ronan, the engine of my trusty old station wagon winding it out on a sunny September afternoon, when I saw it: a large billboard to the side of Highway 93 advertising the Montana Tobacco Quit Line.

Next to a 1-888 number was a picture of an ashtray full of extinguished cigarettes. As the miles passed, I thought a lot about that billboard, having decided to quit smoking – which had been among my favorite activities for the past seven years – on Aug. 30. What kept that billboard churning through my mind was not the phone number, nor thoughts of whether I might call it. Instead, I recalled the sign's drab ashtray and thought, "Man, it looked like they hardly even smoked some of those cigarettes. What a waste."

Such is the excruciating logic of the struggling ex-smoker.

I should have sensed that smoking would pose a problem for me. As bad omens go, check this one out: The very first time I ever smoked a cigarette, my mother caught me red-handed. In retrospect, it wasn't the brightest move on my part. I had taken one of my father's Carltons into my room. The problem is that my room was in the basement. There was only one window, offering little ventilation. As fate would have it, my mother returned home from work early and came down to the basement to say hello as I was about halfway through my first smoke. I did my best to hastily extinguish the cigarette in an ashtray, covering that ashtray with a nearby book.

It was no use. Aside from the fact that the room reeked of cigarette, there was a curious waft of smoke coming from underneath my copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

"Have you been smoking?" my mother asked.

I considered my options, which were either admitting that I had indeed been smoking or trying to convince her that Ken Kesey's prose was so hot it literally set pages afire.

"Uh...no?"

In the end, I told her that I wasn't particularly enjoying the cigarette anyhow, and that I didn't plan to smoke ever again. Of course, some plans change.

Now, eight years and more than 10,000 cigarettes later, I pulled my station wagon into the driveway of my Whitefish apartment with that Quit Line billboard still in my head. For the past two weeks I had essentially quit smoking, except for one relapse night when I was drinking with some acquaintances in the bars of Bigfork. Every day was a struggle between the forces of smoking and nonsmoking, and I had even divided myself into two split personalities: Smoker Mike and Nonsmoker Mike. Smoker Mike would think things like, "One cigarette isn't going to make much difference." Then Nonsmoker Mike would retort, often aloud, "You're not getting a cigarette, you bastard."

This worked well for the most part, with the exception of that one morning on my walk to the office when I told myself, "You're not getting a cigarette, you bastard," without realizing that a middle-aged man was walking within earshot behind me. He tried not to look at me as he hurried past the crazy guy who was talking to himself.

But now I was home. I let the sadly alluring ashtray billboard slip out of my mind, and as I heated some macaroni in a pot of boiling water for a belated dinner, I turned on one of the two television stations I can receive to watch a bit of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. During a commercial break, NBC cut to one of those "The More You Know" public service announcements. In this one, a blonde actress from some television program I've never seen looked into the camera and said, "There's one way to quit smoking that works every time."

There was a pause for dramatic effect, allowing me enough time to wonder, What is it? Please tell me. I'm drowning here!

"Don't start," she concluded, just before the "The More You Know" logo swept across the screen.

You bitch!

OK, that may be a bit harsh, but if the ad was aimed at stopping kids from starting in the first place, they could have framed it that way, rather than raising the hopes of those like myself.

NBC wasn't going to save me. Desperate, the next day I turned to the Montana Tobacco Quit Line or, should I say, the "Montana" Tobacco Quit Line, since I found out that the phone worker I spoke with was actually located in a respiratory hospital in Denver, Colo.

Sitting in the Independent's Kalispell office, overlooking Main Street, I played percussion with reckless abandon on my desk as I listened to the Quit Line's automated attendant. I used to do this all the time back in grade school – engage in spontaneous percussion, that is – and I sometimes wonder if maybe I started smoking simply to have something less toddler-like to do with my hands. Even as I held the phone receiver with one hand, my other was constantly in motion, like Def Leppard's famed one-armed drummer, turning a computer screen into a cymbal and a keypad into a high hat. None of this would be happening if I could just smoke one cigarette, but instead I listened to the recording.

Mike Keefe-Feldman is Flathead bureau chief of the Missoula Independent.

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