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by Bryant Tan
Lowell High School, San Francisco
My dad has a big problem with smoking. He's probably
been smoking "cancer sticks" since he was
born. I don't think I've ever seen him without a cigarette,
even when my mom was pregnant with my little sister.
That may be why my sister has some type of heart problem.
She has to take potent doses of medication twice a
day.
Cigarettes probably mean more to my dad than my mom and his children. He has an immunity to anything anti-smoking. I've tried various tactics to get him to stop smoking, yet nothing ever works.
Every time a commercial comes on against smoking, I furtively turn up the volume just so my father can get the hint. He never seems to get the point. Let's take that "I'm Anna" commercial with that girl who talked about herself in the third person and then revealed to us that she's Anna. When I turn the volume up during that commercial, my dad's probably thinking, "Who the hell is Anna?"
Another of my slick moves that ended up disastrous was when I stole a cigarette from my dad's barrel of Salem Lights. I lit it down to the center of the cigarette when and threw it down the toilet after I began gasping for oxygen. An hour later my dad comes storming into my room and the rest is black and blue history. My reasoning was if he didn't want me to start, he should take the cigarettes out of the house. The barrel is still full and at my dispense.
My father isn't the only one to blame in my never-ending battle against smoking. I blame those damned companies for manufacturing cigarettes; I blame that damned person for inventing cigarettes; and I blame Mother Nature for making tobacco.
Speaking of Mother Nature and her destructive self, I hate her for creating the sun. I hate her for making a sun that omits ultraviolet rays that penetrate our skin and mutates the cells which end up giving you ugly little brown cancerous spots.
Skin cancer is one of the many troubles the sun's rays cause. I'm going to get a melanoma after I get that perfect sun-kissed tan. I'll look like a Dalmatian with my spotted copper-toned body. Maybe I'll look more like a leopard.
If it weren't for society, I wouldn't expose myself for the sun. I'd be covered up from head to toe for the rest of my life instead of wearing thongs on the beach waiting to become a beautiful black male. But I won't blame society because society is blamed too often. So where's Mother Nature? I have to tell her off.
I guess what I'm wishing for is for everyone to be one uniform color. I don't really care if everyone was blue, red, green, yellow, orange, or purple. If we all were the same color and shade, then there wouldn't be any racism. We'd probably decipher each other by the size of our noses. OK, I'll stop digressing.
I shouldn't blame those I've blamed. Scapegoats aren't the solution to any problems. My dad should stop smoking and the sun should stop shining. If they can't do that, I'm just going to have to become a hermit. I'll be a hermit who lives till 100 without lung or skin cancer.