Hirst

Everyone is telling you stop smoking, everywhere you go people will want you to go somewhere else and smoke, what is a smoker to do. Probably the best thing to do is to just quit, but this shouldnt be just because everyone else is telling you, you really should want to stop.

Lets be realistic here, you might say that you enjoy smoking, it helps you relax, calms the nerves, gets you going in the morning, but do you really enjoy it? Think about it here is something that destroys your health, makes you smell like a stale ashtray, and makes you poor. These are probably reasons you already know but have you actually ever taken the time to think about.

How much is it costing you?
Work it out, right now, if you smoke a pack of 20 a day multiply the cost of the cigarettes by 365, if your in the UK thats going to be about 1825 per year, how much have you spent on smoking since you started, how much are you going to spend in the future?

The Smell
Sorry to say it but smokers stink; you dont notice it when you are smoking, but to a non smoker it isnt very appealing. It is not only you who smells of smoke, but your home & car smell will smell as well.

The Cost to your Health of Smoking
If you dont already know, smoking destroys your health, yes, you may know of an uncle who lived to 100 and smoked everyday of his life, but what about the millions who have died prematurely from some horrible illness, so whats that a 1 in a million chance, not very good odds is it.

The time to stop smoking is now, not tomorrow, not next week or next year, the time is now, just think of the better life you can have with more money and not smelling of stale smoke.

Gavin Dye is smoker who has currently decided not to smoke, have a look at his quit smoking website at http://www.kickthecigarette.com

I first read The Monkey's Paw as a youngster in Junior High School. I was touched by how an elderly couple received the gift that everyone would want, three wishes, and how the gift turned into a curse.

I knew something was wrong at the beginning of the story when the previous owner tried to throw it in a fire. I also had a suspicion that though the paw granted wishes, it wouldn't work the way the person making the wish intended. Years later, I saw the Movie "Bedazzled" with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. It's a version of the Faust legend, and hilarious. The Devil (Peter Cook), offers to trade seven wishes for Dudley Moore's character's soul. Dudley is madly in love with a young woman and is more than willing to trade something as worthless as a soul to win her. What the devil does with Moore's wishes makes for one of the funniest movies in the history of film-making. But I didn't know about "Bedazzled" in 8th Grade.

The couple, being older, quite naturally asked for money. And not a great deal, at that. They never realized that it would come as an insurance claim on the death of their son who was working in a factory. Grief-stricken, the wife insists that they wish he would come back. The husband reluctantly agrees. When they hear a knock at the door, the wife runs to open the door. Afraid of what would appear, the husband wishes it would go away. The wife opens the door and sees nothing and hears only the wind.

What a scary story and what a rotten ending, right?

At the time I read it, my English Teacher, Miss Downing, asked the class what we thought of the story. We all felt sorry for the couple. Should the couple have wished for something else with their first wish. Of course they should have, we all said. But of course, no matter what they asked for, it could have turned out as badly for them. And the previous owner had warned them it was a curse and not a blessing.

Miss Downing wasn't about to stop there. Next she asked, should they have asked for son to come back to life? Of course, we all said. But not as a walking corpse.

Then came the biggest question of all. Should they have wished he wouldn't come back?

Nearly everyone in class agreed with what the couple did. That was supposed to be the end of the lesson.

I wasn't as eager to give up. "They wished for the wrong thing," I said.

Miss Downing was ready to move on and wasn't too pleased with me. "And how's that."

"They should have wished that the whole thing never happened because they let the man burn the monkey's paw."

"I never thought of that," my teacher said.

Today, people would call this thinking outside the box. It doesn't require great brilliance, but you do have to try to imagine other alternatives than the ones that are presented to you.

I made another teacher unhappy when I was in the 6th Grade, Miss Janitz was beginning a lesson on archeology. Everyone in the class really was eager to learn about mummies and ancient cities and she gave us a scenario where an archeologist is digging in the sand in Egypt. He finds an ancient box with a hairbrush, a necklace, and a coin dated 38 BC.

I immediately broke out laughing. All the other kids gave me a strange look but I couldn't stop. Finally Miss Janitz said, "Stop that, John. What's so funny?"

"The coin isn't real. You can't have something dated BC before there's a C.'

It turned out I had spoiled three days of her classes.

Copyright 2005 by John R. Anderson

John Anderson has always tried to think outside the box, often with disastrous results. As a stamp dealer, he was always three years ahead of the market and seldom made a profit. He wrote a crime novel involving mitochondrial DNA five years before forensic experts began to use the procedure. His novel, The Cellini Masterpiece, and written under the penname of Raymnd John, is another example of bad timing. Its plot, which is similar to The Da Vinci code, was rejected in the mid-1980s because it was considered by some reviewers to be too unbelievable. Anyone interested in contacting him should log on to http://www.cmasterpiece.com