I'm Italy Mom and this is The Slowdown.

Full confession.

I used to really want to be a smoker.

The cool, unwavering person committed to smoking, despite all its undeniable health

horrors.

On Sonoma's central plaza, down a cobblestone walkway that boasts the local Irish bar and

the back of a French bakery, there used to be a candy shop called No joke, Hookers

Shabang.

My best friend and I would buy chocolate cigarettes and bubblegum cigarettes there, and sit

in the plaza and watch the fake smoke which was powdered sugar leave the fake cigarette.

I love black and white movies, and even then I liked Humphrey Bogart films, anything on

the Turner Classic movie channel.

I especially loved it when Lauren McCall would like a cigarette, and those candy cigarettes

let me pretend I was Lauren McCall.

And then of course I'd unwrap the candy and eat it like the child I was.

When I was in my early twenties, I practiced for a while, learned how a cigarette felt

in my hands, and how I looked with a cigarette between my lips.

It never suited me, despite all my failed attempts.

Smoking made me ill, mostly, sick to my stomach and sick to my heart, and it made me feel

like I needed to go to confession.

I hated the smell of it, the insidiousness of smoke.

But the thing that I loved about it, that's easy.

...