While growing up in South Dakota, I was surrounded by lots of good people. They were kind, hardworking (most of the time), moral people. Everyone I knew drank beer or whiskey, or some kind of alcohol. The fact that they drank was not a problem. The amount they drank…was. They also smoked cigarettes and functioned in smoky rooms and cars and homes. I was a child who had no voice about these things. I remember being in the back seat of our car and feeling sick, because my parents smoked nonstop as we drove wherever we were going. Breathing that air was not a vacation for those of us in the back seat. I determined never ever to smoke. I think breathing second hand smoke is, in a way, an introduction to that addiction. I have tried a few times to pick it up as a casual thing to do. I sometimes ask myself why I did that. The answer is always, because I had some kind of taste for it. We all have a seed of insanity programmed in us. Possibly it could be labeled as original sin. That is probably why I can’t let myself judge anyone else for their personal habits. I have been learning, however, that it is not a requirement to live with those personal habits. I get to choose. Sometimes the choice will be to go it alone.