Charismam "Cool people (so to speak) rarely smoke though. I sometimes see gangs of rough looking 15 years olds hanging around the chip shop smoking but they look underprivileged, not their fault but it's not associated with coolness or good fortune. Cleaning ladies and granddads with 'sovrittin' rings smoke. Healthy strong people who look like they have it all sewn up rarely smoke."
That was your post. I don't quite believe that you were 'commenting dispassionately' on perceptions of smoking as there's no evidence that's what you were doing in your post at all. Possibly you thought that once you'd been called out for the disgusting classist sneery tone of your post it made more sense to try and pass it off as a wry commentary? But it was just read as nasty by all.
If it was genuinely supposed to be a dispassionate discussion of perceptions then you need to make that clearer. It's unfair to accuse me of making assumptions when I only have what you've written to go off and others thought the same!
Agog at the mentality (mummytoboo) of 'well my kids will have to watch me die of something nasty so why not add lung cancer into the mix'. I'm not one to judge smokers at all (would be hypocritical of me for sure) but that mentality... it's just breathtakingly selfish.
I watched my own mum die of drink, so perhaps I should indulge in a litre of vodka per day because after all, a couple relatives had cancer (like 1/3 of us will) so my kids might as well watch me drink myself to death. Never mind that one is avoidable. Never mind that even with a family history or cancer there's no guarantee you'll get it. Never mind that watching someone you love die from a disease out of their control is a different kettle of fish to watching someone die from something they could have avoided. Never mind the extra time with them you might lose when they need you, by increasing the chance you'll speed up your death by years. Never mind any of that, we've all gotta go someday eh!
If you have kids and smoke, fine, your choice. If you die prematurely from an awful slow moving disease related to smoking and they have to witness it all, they will (probably) cope somehow, as they have no choice.
But admit it's selfish, even if only to yourself. Admit that the cigarettes are more important right now than the potential future risk of dying from something avoidable and leaving your family to grieve. There is more honour in just being bloody honest that you are making that decision than trying to wrap it up in fake 'ah well, gonna die of something' cavalier attitude as if smoking doesn't have any chance of raising your risk of dying from it.
Imagine at your funeral, you died of, say, breast cancer. You didn't smoke. It was unavoidable. A sad tragedy, but your kids know you didn't cause it to happen and wouldn't have chosen to leave them.
Now imagine dying of a smoking induced illness, say lung cancer. And you were a smoker. Grief is much more complicated when you have to grapple with knowing someone chose a habit that would likely kill them, it's not 'not their fault', it's self inflicted. Knowing that the cigarettes were more important to you than being alive for them
wonder if they'll think 'ah well we all have to go someday, may as well be from smoking!'
I just don't understand how anyone can truly hold that mentality you do.