Remember the cigarette billboard that blew perfect smoke rings?
Remember the cigarette manufacturers?
She doesn't remember the girl with the cigarette I painted for her -- she used to smoke and now she says she just collects artwork of women smoking.
My mother is an antiques dealer, and I remember the kitschy red-tin Chesterfield cigarettes sign I found among her stuff and hung on the wall in my dorm.
Along the way, we camped out at a succession of roadside motels about which I remember only the cigarette stink, saggy beds and the late-night news reports that drove my father into silence and my mother into tears.
(Remember the decades-long battle over whether cigarette smoking causes cancer? Today, history is repeating itself with Bisphenol A and other chemicals).
You were constantly pinching yourself going, 'God, I remember those cigarettes and yes, that's what a train ticket used to look like.' A world I miss actually.
Remember the bit in Heathers where the bomb blast lights Veronica's cigarette?
"OMG! You're the rape girl!" she screams, as I light up my cigarette outside the Koreatown bar I'll never remember the name of.
I remember all the jingles — but I also remember the welcome cynicism of Mad Magazine parodies in which gravestones discussed the great taste of cigarettes and Hitler endorsed them as terrific mass murderers.
