How Victoria's Secret helped me quit smoking...10 years late we look back.

Today I have been smoke free for 10 years!  Yikes.  I'm really not old enough to say that am I.  Oh.  I am though.
How did I start smoking.  I smoked a little in High School and started smoking more in college.  I think what turned me into a smoker was my friend Scott telling me I wasn't a 'real' smoker.  According to him I didn't smoke enough and my Marlborough Ultra Lights were not real cigarettes.
Well, I'll show him!!  Fake smoker my ass!  Really Al?? Really???  THAT is how you started smoking at least a pack a day??
I LOVED smoking.  I'm pretty sure if I still did it, I would still love it.  I didn't so much love the bronchitis once a year, but other than that...a cigarette after a meal, a cigarette with friends, a cigarette when you were bored, stressed, happy, drunk.  Really--you name it when ISN'T it a good time to have a cigarette?  Driving--forget it.  A cigarette and some good music.
I like to think I was someone who made smoking look good.  Maybe I wasn't but, at the time in my head I totally was!
However, in college I made some financial mistakes...there may have been some creditors harassing me.
Another breaking point that will not go down so well--the Victoria's Secret incident.
I had opened a charge there when I was a freshman in college because, well I was old enough and I could. I also needed some underwear.
When I was younger I also didn't think it was important to pay my bills on time.  Especially when I could use that money to buy beer, cigarettes and snacks!
So, the phone calls started-and obviously I didn't answer.  That is when the attorney decided to hunt me down.  I say hunt as in stalk my aunts and uncles with the same last name and say they were calling on behalf of my unpaid balance with Victoria's Secret.  Then they called my dad.
So, now it sounds to my family like I'm a crazy lingerie fiend who doesn't pay her bills...what exactly is she doing up there in school?
Yeah.  It wasn't my most proud moment.
Enter my poor dad who ended up bailing me out of numerous debts so I could pull it together.  I will never forget that conversation or how low I felt having to ask him for that money.  One of my most embarrassing moments.
I got out of his car and thought to myself, if I cannot afford to pay my dad this money right now, and pay my own bills-I sure as hell cannot afford to smoke.
I was out of cigarettes and went up to my friends dorm.  I asked Heather for a cigarette.  She rolled her eyes at me -  as she was broke too- and I said 'It is the last one I will ever bum from you'
She said 'Yeah right'.
I said 'This is my last cigarette.  I am quitting.'
Heather handed me a cigarette and laughed in my face.  Well, that is all the taunting I needed.
I have not had so much as a drag since.  Not one.
Partly because now I think it is gross and I would probably throw up, partly because if I have one it's all over.  I am the kind of person who would have one and would be a pack a day smoker again in about 2 seconds flat.
So, today I am thankful for Victoria's Secret and my good friend Heather.  They really pulled together ten years ago to help me kick the habit.