Bad Habits I'm just sitting here, in relative peace, feeling various parts of my body trying to overcome the need for assimilation or elimination of the vast quantities of non normal sustenance they were exposed to over the holidays. The assimilation process seems to be going well as my waist thickens and my multi-layered chin adds new layers. We had a great Christmas and I hope you did as well. Next comes New Year which we will spend, relatively quietly, with a few dear friends. This is the time of year when people think of new begin- nings, new challenges and improved life-style. I suppose the New Year's resolution practise arose because of our unhappiness with last year's events and a yearning for better times. Hence, a penchant for looking at ourselves, discovering our "bad habits" and resolving to change them. Now if you've gone through this process of introspection you know it isn't easy and sometimes rather difficult to find fault with yourself. Fortunately most of us have spouses or partners who are only too delighted, indeed enthusiastic, about pointing out our faults and offering encouragement for change. Through the years I've made many New Year's resolutions. Some, not many, were achieved, most were forgotten or just given up as not too important. One though, I was most successful with. Not just because I decided in a moment of clarity that I must change but rather after a long, careful thought process that what I was doing was harmful to me and to others. 1 began to smoke before I was a teenager and carried on for over 40 years. I did make a change in the 60's. I was working for the Ministry of Health and read the British Medical journal that published the first genuinely re- searched data on the contribution of cigarette smoke to Cancer. No no I didn't quit but one of their findings was that pipe smokers didn't have the same high incidence of cancer (later found not to be true) so I switched to the pipe. I happily chuffed, puffed, coughed and spit through the years, smoking my Brigham pipes and a collection of various tobaccoes, finally ending up with Erinmore. It wasn't good for me, or others, as more and more data were published about the killing nature of smoke and second hand smoke and the fact that smoking was becom- ing less and less socially acceptable so I knew I really must quit. I began a long process of cutting back and had a few opportunities to force the cut back. In those years I was responsible for the 10,000 + buildings owned by the Ontario Government plus the 1000's leased by them. I took an active lead in encouraging Ministry's to ban smoking in their space and eventually was instrumental in having a Government-wide ban imposed in all our build- ings, owned and leased. This forced me, along with all other smokers to go out, in all weather, for our puffs (I still look with bemusement at the poor unfortunates shivering outside buildings pulling cancer causing substances into their lungs). Over the course of a year I reduced my con- sumption from about 3 tins a week to less than 1. My target date for quitting was Dec.31 1992. As my pipes became damaged (I bit through the stems) I didn't have them repaired until I was down to one useable pipe. My Doctor prescribed the gum and patches so I was ready. On the target date I quit, chewed some gum, got sick and never touched the gum, patches or tobacco since. "What about alcohol?" 1 hear you ask. Well I'm not con- vinced. I do like my Scotch. A very dry Martini is a pleas- ure and I follow St. Paul's advice "Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake" while also being aware of his admonition "Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess". Also my Doctor has never said to me, "2 or 3 pipesful a day are okay John" as he has said about alcohol. I asked Valerie about bad habits and we both had a great time discussing the pluses and minuses of our habits. We do share one which is covered by a four letter Anglo-Saxon word as are many of the "less polite in public" activities of our lives. I tend to think of this shared bad habit in the context of the usual clue in a crossword "constantly re- minding of short comings" It's the Anglo Saxon word to nagg. Now nagging is a common shortcoming in many families and we had a lively discussion on who was better or worse at it. In the end we decided that each of us were pretty good naggers and had probably over time picked up the finer points from each other so that it was difficult to determine who was more expert. In addition, nagging played such a permanent, however Continued on page 10