If I didn't have asthma, I'd probably get up first thing in the morning and have a cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette. I'd smoke something cheap like Basic Cigarettes. I'd flood the air in my house with as much smoke as I could, and I wouldn't care if everything in my house smelled like smoke.
I wouldn't care what it smelled like because I wouldn't be able to smell it anyway. Cigarette smoke, as you know, makes you blind of those things. I wouldn't be able to smell very well. I wouldn't' smell it unless I quit smoking. I think this is a defense mechanism.
I love the ambiance that cigarette smoke creates. I love the smell of cigarette smoke. I love it.
I loved going to grandma and grandpa's house when I was a kid and smell that good old sweet smell of grandpa smoking. I don't know why I did, yet I did. I suppose it's the same male part of me that enjoys the smell of gasoline. I love revving up my snow blower and getting a huge whiff of the smell of gasoline. I just love it.
Now you guys probably think I'm nuts considering I have asthma, yet just because I have asthma doesn't mean I can't like the smell of what irritates it. In an ideal world I'd work at a car dealership, drink beer during my breaks, and chain smoke cigarettes while fixing car engines. and I wouldn't apologize for doing it either like Obama does. I wouldn't' quit if my kids told me to quit because it's no longer socially acceptable.
I'd be more like John Boehner and say something like, "Now, why did you bring that up. I know I have a bad habit, and I'm not going to quit and I'm not going to apologize for it. I smoke and I enjoy smoking."
My dad owned a car dealership, and the only reason I never got a job working for him, and the reason he sold the shop to a stranger instead of keeping it in the family, is partly because his son Rick has bad asthma. Rick wasn't able to spend quality time in the shop.
Now there were days when I was in my early 20s where I would take the day off college and drive cars with my dad to an auction. At the auction we drank beer, and cheap beer like Natural Lite too. We'd drink cheep beer because we wouldn't' care about what's cool or what's in. We drank cheep beer because then we could drink more and get drunker.
And the rest of the guys would smoke cigarettes. It was a blast.
I wouldn't quit drinking due to public pressure either, like both George Bush's did.
We drank beer right out in the public too. And the owners of the auction encouraged it, because they were men too. They had common sense to know that men are men, and men like to smoke and drink beer. If doing those things increased the attendance at the auction, then they were privy to it. There was no political correctness.
Yet those days came to an end. Those days were also far and few between even when I was able to do them, because my asthma didn't always cooperate. They beer dried out my lungs, and the cigarette smoke irritated my lungs too. So having fun in this was was kind of like a double edged sword. Yet I still did it whenever I could.
Yet I didn't ruin their fun by calling my congressman and encouraging him to make a law banning public smoking and drinking. I chose to hang out somewhere else. It was someone else who ruined their fun.
Yet just because I have asthma doesn't mean I still don't have the same likes of trucks, gas, smoke, good food, and dirt as other guys do. We guys like big trucks and big engines, and we like to talk tough and do tough things. We like to drive big trucks with engines that ROOOOAAAAAAR!!!!
Men don't care if food is left out all night. Men don't care if food fell on the floor. Men aren't afraid of a little germs. Men don't care that there is a little brown in the cracks of the tile on the counter. Men don't care about that stupid germy crap. And if you believe in the Hygiene Hypothesis or the Norma Flora Hypothesis, men are right not to be afraid.
We like to eat bacon and eggs and large steaks and hamburgers with onion rings and french fries soaked in high fat Greece, not the cheap stuff they now use at Burger King and Wendy's. Real men don't eat salads. Real men don't diet. Real men are happy no matter what
they weigh. I remember the neighbor lady saying to dad once, "You wouldn't be you if you were skinny."
Yet I diet. I watch my weight. I'm sitting here with a bowl of cottage cheese and a banana only because when I don't eat healthy I gain weight and my asthma sucks worse. I will at some point go into my basement and run on the treadmill and lift weights, while the other men in my family will work in a factory (eight hours of stress per day), and then sit and drink beer, smoke cigarettes, and watch old movies of Clint Eastwood.
Then they'll go blow snow because they tire of listening to their wives gossip on the phone. Or perhaps they tire because their wives keep interrupting Clint Eastwood to tell about Uncle Joe who just had an affair with Aunt Sarah's uncle Bill's brother Sam's sister's cousins dads, ..... blah blah blah...
Which is why men love watching when Homer Simpson's mind wanders off to some distant land when Marge is blah blah-ing to him about something blah blah blah...
And that's probably the reason I love going outside blowing snow with my snow blower at 7 a.m. in the morning when it's five degrees above zero, with the engine roaring at a decibel loud enough for everyone in the neighborhood to enjoy. I love that it puts fumes in the air that I can smell. I love that it uses a ton of gas. I love polluting the air.
It's just awesome to be able to do it. I wish I could do more of it. And this, I suppose, is a perfect reason why it is probably good that I have asthma. As you guys know asthma is linked to anxiety, and perhaps I have a little anxiety. I have some little habits, some finicky little habits, that make me think that if I could, I'd sit around chain smoking all day.
It's for this reason I don't want lawmakers making laws banning smoking. I don't want to see other guys have their fun taken away. If someone wants to smoke, if someone wants to pollute his air, he should have every right to do that. However, common sense applies. While ignorance is legal, while it's legal to be stupid, I don't think it should be legal to do something that hurts other people -- so long as you don't get caught.
I don't think it's okay to sit and smoke in front of little kids. I don't' think it's okay to sit and smoke in front of your wife who doesn't smoke. I don't think it's okay to sit in a baseball stadium and blow smoke in the air that little kids breathe.
In this sense, I'm all for some regulations. Yet none that say that you or you or you cannot smoke. So long as the regulations are made by the local people and not some stupid person sitting in a suit on some leather chair that costs $10,000 in an office some 10,000 miles away.
I'm going to hate the day when gas engines are a thing of the past. I personally hope that day never comes. I'd rather hear engines putt putt and ROAR than hear... nothing. I'd rather zoooooooom down the road than putt putt in a little golf cart. I'd rather pay $40 at the pump than $7,000 on an electric battery.
Yet that's just me. I like Homer Simpson. I like Homer Simpson because he is one of the few characters on TV who is realistic. He is one of the few men on TV who says what he really thinks, what a man really would say, instead of what the women watching TV would want him to say.
Did you know that a majority, say 90%, of TV sitcoms are aimed at women. Men don't sit and watch that crap. They don't because men don't like political correctness. So on almost all of those shows, the men do what women would want. The men say what the writers think women would want. Two and a Half Men might be the only exception.
Most of those TV shows do not represent the real world. In the real world you have Homer Simpson's, and you have Al Bundy. Ah, Married With Children was on for eleven years and I don't' think it ever even showed up on the top ten in the ratings. The same may be said of The Simpson's.
These shows did not last as long as they did because they were politically correct. They lasted as long as they did because they catered to men. They were of the few TV shows in prime time that cater to a male audience. And that is why they lasted so long. They lasted because they gave advertisers a way to advertise to men.
Home Improvement started out this way. Yet by the end of that program Tim the Tool man Taylor was saying and acting how the writers thought a women would want him to act instead of how a man would really act. Tim the Tool Man caved.
I don't watch a TV show and hear men saying what I would say to my wife. I'm not saying I'm rude to my wife, yet I'd be more likely to make fun of her for gossipping on the phone all day as opposed to encouraging it. You won't see me stand up every time I talk to my wife. I'd be more likely to sit in my chair and sip a beer like Archie Bunker.
I'd be more likely to sit and say nothing than to get into an argument over goofy things that don't matter. I'd be more likely to go into the basement and work on a project than to sit around talking about if Aunt Millie has sex with women. Men just don't gossip like that.
Men are more likely, in real life, to talk about guns and rifles and baseball than anything else. Men are more likely to sit and watch Football and grunt when something good happens than talk. Men don't even say if they're happy, it's just assumed. Men don't say they're mad, it's just assumed. Real men don't get mad, they just take it in stride.
Most men are kind, compassionate, patient and considerate, yet not push overs. Most real men have an aura of equanimity.
Men are more likely to talk about the news and politics that they know you aren't supposed to talk about. Men are likely to discuss politics as opposed to religion, yet that they believe is just assumed. They like to talk about things that are offensive to others, things they can't discuss in front of children and wives.
In fact, men are more likely to be modest and be quiet around their women than say anything at all. We are more likely to keep quiet unless someone is offending and treating our women poorly. We are more likely to do whatever we have to do to keep the peace. We keep our homes safe. We have dry humor.
And we end the day with a beer and a cigar after revving up some engine out in the garage (it used to be feeding the horses. It used to be shoveling up horse shit. Yet now we have gas engines). And surely the gas engines and the cigarettes and the gas has had its impact on us asthmatics. Yet it's not our fault.
Yet we have asthma. Yet I have asthma. So instead of puffing on a cigarette 12 hours during the day, I sit here typing on this silly blog. I have all these ideas rolling around in my head like balls on a billiards table, and instead of keeping them in my humble and modest head, I choose to share them with you.
So you benefit from all the stuff I can't do that other real men get to do. YOU are the main beneficiary. And, in a strange way, I suppose I'm a beneficiary too, because writing in its own way is a form of therapy. While I'm typing away I'm sorting my many brilliant thoughts, and I'm sipping away at my cup of coffee.
Sure a normal person might have just one cup of coffee, yet I'm on my second. And maybe later this morning I'll have a third. There's this thing I read recently that those who have more than 2 cups of coffee take up to seven years off their lives. Remember when they used to say that about smoking cigarettes? They used to say every one took seven years off your life.
Yet who cares about that. I'm going to say the same thing my grandpa used to say when I'd try to get him to quit smoking (even though I love the smell of the smoke he created). He'd say, "I'd rather die young that to live to be 100 and have not had a fun life."
So now that the people searching for some euphoric world have taken away the ability of men to smoke in public, and are tackling public drinking, and eating salt, and high fat food, they'll probably set out an all out assault on coffee at some point to. It's like a bar of wet soap that slips from your wet hands in the morning shower; it's a slippery slope.
I'm the same way. I want to enjoy every molecule of air that goes into my body. I want to enjoy every minute. And if the smell of gas and a cup of coffee allows for me to ease my mind, then I'm all in for it. It's a go.
Thankfully we have a U.S. Constitution that prevents our lawmakers from making any law that takes away the freedoms that each us us were born with, and the rest of the people around the world yearn for. If we men choose to be stupid, it's our God given right to do so. If we choose to smoke and kill our lungs, then by golly do it.
The only way we will no longer have the right to do these stupid things is if our Congressmen choose to ignore the Constitution, or if they sign on to to something like the New World Order and bypass the Constitution altogether.
So men have a right to do what men do. Yet we do it with common sense. If I didn't' have asthma I'd smoke like my dad. I wouldn't' let my kids ever see me, to the point they didn't even know I smoked (I was 18 before I realized my dad smoked all my life). I'd smoke outside at night, and while working during my breaks. Yet I'd have common sense.
I'd have a sip of beer on my break, and I'd finish the can after work like my grandpa did. Yet you'd never see me drunk. I'd play cards after work with the guys, and then I'd come home and roll on the ground with my kids. Then I'd snuggle with my wife. Those are the things that wouldn't change whether I had asthma or not.
Yet occasionally I'd to to the cabin and smoke in front of the guys and force them to inhale my smoke, and I'd get drunk with them while drinking whiskey and coke or Natural Lite. I wouldn't drink wine, because wine is a drink for wussy men and for women.
Asthma can change what we do, yet it does not change who we are. We might focus on doing different things with our hands, yet we are still the same. I'm an asthmatic, yet I'm still a man. I may be an asthmatic, yet I still love what men like. I'm an asthmatic, yet I'm still me.
And if you let some THING control who you are, I feel sorry for you. Because if you let things control you, you are not you. That's something I learned way back when I was ten years old. Way back then I had bad asthma, yet I still yearned to wrestle with my brothers in the dusty basement. I ended up in the hospital sometimes, yet I still did it.
I never missed a day of school when I just stayed home in bed. If I missed a day of school it was because I was in the hospital. I never failed to go out to recess even when my teacher tried to convince me not to go out in zero degree whether. I didn't want to stay in because I didn't want to be seen as different. I didn't want to be seen as the asthmatic.
No! That wouldn't be me. That wouldn't be the man thing to do. Common sense applies, and perhaps when I was a kid I didn't' always use common sense, yet my asthma did not change me. I do not smoke, I do not work in a factory like my brothers.
Yet when it comes right down to it. I'm still the same old Rick Frea. And I'm still writing stupid crap like this. And later this morning I'm going to put more gas fumes into the air as I run my snow blower in five degree weather. And yes I'll probably wheeze while I freeze.
If I didn't' have asthma I'd probably smoke, and you wouldn't be able to stop me. Since lawmakers like to punish those who have fun, and since cigarettes are $5 a pack, I'd probably order cheap ones from some country in Africa illegally, or I'd roll mly own.
That's just me; that's just who I am -- asthma or no asthma.
