I don't smoke, never have, and when I was in middle school (aged about eleven) the kids had obviously heard people saying that "everyone smoked at the high school." Somehow this belief developed that when you got to high school, the older kids would grab you in the yard and force you to smoke cigarettes. We'd never heard of peer pressure and this seemed the only explanation for the fact.
"Well, I won't let them give me any cigarettes."
"Duh, Silverstar1809, they FORCE you to smoke them."
"I don't care, I'll... trip them over or something!" (From the sweet kid of an eleven-year-old that I was, this was unprecedented violence.)
Not made any better by the fact that I had asthma and began coughing horribly if someone was smoking on the same train platform, so I believed that actually smoking would kill me.
Somehow I survived.
A childhood belief about smoking
others believed things like this
- all people who smoke roll up cigarettes have been to prison— spam
- I used to think that my dad was "smoking pot" when he would smoke his pipe while sitting on the toilet. Anon
- A friend on mine thought that smoking menthal cigarettes would make his breath minty fresh.Anon
- I used to believe that smoke stacks that pumped out white smoke were cloud makers.— lizzie
- I used to believe that at dance clubs, the "smoke" that they'd spray was laden with drugs and I'd get high.— Lynn
- I used to believe that if you smoked too much,when you got mad your ears would smoke.Anon