When I was fourteen years old, visiting my aunt and uncle at our cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains, my uncle Lee came flying through the front door, into the kitchen, his fist tight up against his chest, clutching the countertop, groaning, “Oh fuck, Jesus, where are the Tums?” I thought he was having a goddamn heart attack. He was old after all, older that I thought I would ever be. My Uncle was my hero, an outlaw biker, tattoos old Harley Davidson motorcycles, and a profound love that he shared vigorously of rock and roll. Throw in that he had a gorgeous wife that was sweet, charming, smart and had tattoos on her tits. So I was fourteen and the man walked on water.

A few hours later I was sitting on the stump behind the outhouse smoking one of my first cigarettes, reveling in my new found adulthood however it wasn’t long before my world-wise uncle caught on.

“You been smokin’?”

“Yeah.”

“You don?t have to hide that shit from us. I won’t tell your grandpa.”

Like I said, my uncle was fucking cool. A few days later, frying up some fish we had caught earlier that day, Lee let me in on some of the events that led up to his kicking the habit a few years earlier. It was the typical shit you hear from many ex-smokers; spend a weekend partying, spent most of Sunday night hacking with difficulty breathing and he just thought to himself, “Man, I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

“Yeah, that sucks.” I was fourteen.

But what kept running through my mind was, “But dude…you’re old.”

My uncle was thirty the year he quit smoking.

I turned twenty-nine this year. I tried to quit smoking this week. Failed. I found myself driving 70mph to HEB to get some Tums because it felt like someone was ass-raping my chest.

I love my Uncle Lee and I’m glad that I seem to be turning into him.