To all of you smokers, I want you to stop and imagine the horror of what I endured over the last day. It took me 22 hours door to door to fly from South Carolina to New Hampshire. Our President brought air traffic to a standstill by flyng to Egypt from Dulles airport in Washington a few hours before my flight arrived. All operations into and out of the airport were suspended without advance notice, for hours. As a result every flight into and out of Dulles missed its connections. I talked to one woman who flew in from Europe, boarded her fligtht out of Dulles, sat on the runway for 5 hours, and taxied back to the same gate before being stranded for the night. Imagine doing that as a nicotine addict. Imagine the "stress" of being a smoker in that airplane for five hours. It's like a horror movie.
United Airlines lied to us all night. Our flight was supposed to leave on time at 10 pm and then five minutes later it was delayed to 11 pm and then delayed to 12 pm and then back to the orginal scheduled departure. We boarded at 12:30 am. At 12:45 am, they told us to get off the plane because the pilot had exceeed his allotted hours the day. They had us walk half a mile to a counter to get re-booked on a flight in the morning. They lied and said it was the weather. No meal vouchers. No free hotel. By then, it's 1:30 in the morning and not even worth trying to take a shuttle to a hotel only to turn right around and come back. So I slept in the airport.
Imagine sleeping in a non-smoking airport as nicotine addict. You'd be climbing the walls. 22 hours without at opportunity to smoke. Trust me, I was plenty pissed off at the situation, but I just kept chuckling to myself about how great it was to be free of any desire to smoke and to not have to drag that ball n' chain around, too
So, the next time you think that BS about how you "enjoy" smoking, think for a minute how much you would enjoy 22 hours of forced deprivation. Do you want to live like that? Or would you rather open the lock, step out of the shackles, and live your life free of that ball n' chain?
