Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me!

It's not really that bad.  I've just had that refrain running through my head for a couple of weeks.  Possibly a couple of decades, but definitely a couple of weeks.  One of my friends from high school who I have "Facebook" re-connected with, which is only a half-hearted reconnection, posted a status update a few weeks ago of "Sleeping single in a double bed," which is a Barbara Mandrell song, for all you non-country folk who may not know.  In any event, (my alternative to 'Nonetheless') I have had a non-stop refrain of bad 1970's and 1980's country songs running through my head since then. At first I though "gloom, despair and agony on me," was an Oak Ridge Boy's production, but I was soooo wrong it is from the ONE, the ONLY,   

HEE HAW!  I am apparently a (an?) hillbilly.  So that made me wonder what other remembrances of childhood history may be impacting my subconscious that I'm unaware of (that is a ha ha, to go with my hee haw.  You know, subconscious that may be impacting my conscious.  Once again, I digress).  When I was a wee little child, there are only two people who I remember as actual smokers, even though others have admitted to being smokers after the fact.  My Grandma Gus (my mom's mom) and her husband (who she married after my granddad died when I was six months old, or who I would have called my granddad) were real and for true smokers, and I hated it.  Truly, when she came to our house when I was a kid and my mom let her smoke inside, I threw gigantic fits! Smoking stinks, and makes everything disgusting, and made my mom's asthma (that she had while living with the smoker) inflamed and dangerous.  So basically I was a nasty brat whenever Grandma Gus came around, and then I started smoking.

Also, I remember Dad's shop smelling like cigarette smoke when I was a kid.  I also remember it being plastered with posters of "Part's girls" from whatever parts store sponsored them.  I did find the shop to be a fun place full of new adventures.  There were welders there, and the little carts that let mechanics roll underneath cars, and hydraulic lifts....it was little kid Nirvana.  Plus, there were vending machines there that I had the keys to when I was not old enough to attend kindergarten, stocked with RC Cola products and off brand hostess treats.  Was that enough to endear the stinky stench of cigarette to me years (no really, at least a decade plus) after the fact?  I doubt it.  So, I still have no idea, aside from the lovely looks of Sobranie Black Russians (the brand of smokes I started on), why I ever started smoking.  I shall continue on my subconscious quest through the origins of my smoking, which apparently leads me down a road of very mediocre country-western music, until October 6, when my brain may hopefully be retrained.  So as not to leave you with the above image of hillbilly scariness I provide the following....George Clooney pretending to be a hillbilly.

 

"I am a [wo]man of constant sorrow," but I seem to actually enjoy it, which makes me think it's not actually sorrow.