It was 1971; I was a stressed-out PhD candidate at the University of Michigan. At 26 years old, I was smoking so much that I’d be opening my 4th pack toward the end of each day (back then cigarettes cost $3.00 a carton). My office mate in the foreign languages building, a young man I just couldn’t stand, kept bugging me to quit because (poor guy) he couldn’t breathe in our shared GTA office. I continued smoking up a cloud, ignoring his pleas until he baited me, suggesting that I probably couldn’t quit because “women have no will power.”

That’s all it took for this arch-feminist, the Jane Fonda of Ann Arbor, to go nuts over such a sexist remark. He let me calm down and then offered to bet with me that I could not quit for 6 months. If I smoked during that time, I owed him $15 (an enormous sum for us graduate students back then). If I truly quit with no cheating, he’d pay me double and never again make sexist utterances. It was THE hardest thing I have ever done — to this day! But the thought of paying off that “male chauvinist pig” was more than I could countenance; so I really did it. From that day until today I have not had one puff of tobacco (or anything else).

My technique for the first month was to live my life in three minute chunks, telling myself that if I made it from 3.03-3.06 pm, then I could probably make it from 3.06-3.09. It got easier after a month or two, and then it seemed like a real waste of effort to backslide. So I stuck to my guns. I was miserable that year writing my dissertation, so I figured that stopping smoking and losing 10 pounds were two other goals I could also accomplish at the same time, since I was going to be in thesis anguish anyway.

I accomplished all three goals, and with a great flourish he happily paid me off. I refused payment, because I realized that he had done me the biggest favor for which I could have ever asked. He insisted I take the money, however, as his payment for clean air in our office. We became fast friends and still occasionally correspond; he’s a really nice guy now — I guess he always was; it’s just that my head had been too clouded in cigarette smoke to realize it !!

Jan Kozma

Lawrence