Day 6: Flashback Friday!

So this blog will have a **NEW FEATURE** called "Flashback Friday" in which I reminisce about something incredibly stoopid I did when I was smoking and drinking like a world champion. Ideally, I will recall said stupidity, feel something akin to disgust over my ridiculousness, and feel renewed in my commitment to quit smokes and drinks.

Right before the weekend when all I want to do is chain smoke while sucking down beers.

This week's memory takes us back to a time and a land far, far away -- back when I lived in Cambridge, MA and drove 35 minutes each way to Salem, NH to teach. (If you can believe this: That commute was actually better than the 50 minutes each way I drove when I lived in Dover, NH and commuted to Salem. This is why New England is weird. All those little states...)

Okay, so every morning I would wake up every morning at 5:15 am, make myself a pot of coffee, get dressed and watch the news, and drive to work while listening to NPR.

**** If you are my mother, you can stop there. That is all I did. There is no more to this post.****

The above is horseshit, but significantly less embarrassing than the truth:

Every morning, I would wake up late as shit -- thereby eliminating time to make coffee -- wear whatever was not on my floor, throw my wet hair in a pony tail while trying to remember where-in- the-name-of-all-that-is-holy I parked my car last night, haul-ass to the Dunkin Donuts drive through, get a coffee, and smoke three cigarettes on my way to work.

"Dunkin Donuts!" you cry! "Not Starbucks?!? You are a Starbucks loyalist!"

Um, only because the Dunkin Donuts ice coffee down here is inexplicably horrible. In New England it is made of Unicorn Milk and the Dust of Sacred Fairy Burial Grounds.

Anyway, on the way home, I would repeat the morning procedure -- except by then my hair would be dry.

Let's examine what I've just told you for a moment, shall we? I just said I purchased not one, but two Dunkin Donuts Medium Iced coffees with cream and sugar every day for 180 days (give or take the occasional sick/snow/fiercely-hungover-and-dry-heaving day) and smoked SIX cigarettes in the car alone.

I then got home, got on the phone and smoked another half a pack.

But let's just run the numbers on the commute alone: That's six cigarettes x 180 days = 1080 cigarettes. That's 54 packs of cigarettes at about $4.00 a pack.

PLUS the two iced coffees at approximately $2.50 apiece.

$900 on coffee. Nine. Hundred. Dollars.

Oh, and $216 on smokes. Just on the commute.

Allow me to serve these numbers up with a side of perspective: That total was about 10% of my bi-weekly take home.

Appalling.

But that's not even the story, folks! This is:

One morning I am running Especially Late. "Especially Late" means I will arrive to school and school will have started without me. "Especially Late" means I am drying my hair by smoking an extra cigarette and rolling down the windows more than usual.

"Especially Late" does NOT, however, mean skip the iced-coffee. Ooooh nooo. I got my iced-coffee.

Then I got on the highway.

Then I realized I was out of smokes.

Panic. Panicpanicpanicpanic. What to do? What to do...

You, sensible person, are wondering what the panic is all about. Legitimate pondering. You, sensible person, are clearly not addicted to cigarettes. You, also, would never do what I did:

I got off the highway and got the smokes. Yes, even though it would make me an additional 15 minutes late -- I thought it was worth it.

But how to explain the lateness? One cannot stroll into work a full 30 minutes late without some kind of excuse.

And I hear "I ran out of smokes" does not exactly suggest professionalism.

So I called school and told them I got pulled over.

Yeah! Because that's better.

W.T.F. ??

Yes, I said I got pulled over for speeding and that it made me late, and the receptionist chuckled and said she'd find coverage for my class and I took a giant sigh of relief full of nicotine and smoke and felt much, much better.

Until I actually got pulled over.

Karma is real, bitches. Real.

But wait. It gets better:

I got pulled over in front of the school.

Oh yes I did, and you know who saw it all go down?

Oh, right, um, everyone.

Cover: Blown. Self: Humbled. Employment Status: Surprisingly, still solid.

I owned up to what happened, and everyone thought it was pretty funny, and felt my real speeding ticket was sufficient punishment for conjuring up an imaginary one.

That pack of smokes cost me $78.50 (plus the increase in my insurance premium, as I assure you, that was not my first dance with the po-po -- click here for details) but I learned a valuable lesson that day:

Telling the truth is infinitely cheeper than lying.