Generation XY or Why I Can't Quit Smoking

I hate being 25. Not because there's something wrong with the age 25, because the age itself is pretty sweet. Mid 20's, still young, starting to plan serious life goals but not expected to meet any specific expectations just yet. It's good, all things considered.

What I hate is belonging to my nongeneration, and it truly is a nongeneration. I'm not old enough to be GenerationX, and I'm not young enough to be Generation Y. So I guess I'm Generation XY, because there are cultural traits I can identify with from both groups. Sometimes this is a good thing; it affords me a slightly more diverse world view. Sometimes it sucks, like when I'm trying to quit smoking. Here's why:

For GenerationXers, smoking was still cool. While not as fashionable as it was in the 60's and 70's, smokers in the 80's were still widely accepted, despite rising cases of lung cancer. Many GenXers who still smoke do so even though they know better, because that's how they were raised, and they really have no desire to change. They may entertain ideas of quitting, but no one really rides them too hard if they don't, because they grew up thinking smoking was acceptable and cool. Hell, when I was born, my mom smoked in the hospital waiting for her OB/GYN to come deliver me! You could smoke in grocery stores, in department stores, on planes and trains and in the bus stations.

The polar opposite to GenX's view on smoking is GenerationY, the kids approximately 5 years younger than myself. These kids were raised and indoctrinated to the EVILS of smoking. It was WRONG it was GROSS it made you SICK it was DIRTY, blah blah blah. So GenY doesn't have the excess of smokers that GenX does, because they know better, and they were raised with that anti-smoking mindset.

Then there's kids like me, in that not-X-not-Y classification, for whom smoking was kinda cool for a little while, and now is just looked upon with complete disdain. We should know better, but we were raised with it in our faces, so where do our loyalties lay? Are we with the smokers, or against them? People my age who smoke catch hell from all sides for smoking, yet we still have that desire to infuse our bodies with delicious, delicious nicotine.

Remember candy cigarettes? I'm one of the last age groups that had candy cigarettes. Kids today will never know the joy of candy cigarettes and pretending to be "just like mom and dad." When we were kids, it was acceptable, when we became adults and could legally pursue the pleasure, it became a stigma.

And I hate it.

I want to quit, truly I do, but I reall don't. I have no desire to quit smoking; I like smoking. And yet, I feel as though I have to quit, because if I don't, I'll have to hear about it for the rest of my life.

And I'm narcissistic enough to believe that I'm the only one with the right to bitch.