Smoking taught me the positive implications of persecution. History teaches us that Christianity flourishes in times of persecution. I'd always read that but never really understood it - until I became a smoker. Smokers are persecuted more than any other group in our American culture. People give you dirty looks and quickly usher their children away from you. Society sends you out to the elements and makes you stand on the street curb. The result is that smokers stick together. Solidarity. These are the people who have stood with me in sub-zero wind-chills. They sit with me in that little joke of a "shelter" outside O'Hare airport and take turns pushing the button for the radiant heaters when they shut off every three minutes (a sadistic persecution in and of itself) and scrounged for a match because the TSA banned lighters. My fellow smokers are brethren - they're family. Fellow smokers used to routinely approach me, "Hey buddy, can I bum a smoke?" Absolutely - here you go brother. Need a light, too? I knew I could make the same request of any smoker - anywhere - anytime and the generosity would be reciprocated. I found myself running out of smokes at Disneyworld. I went in search of one of the handful of carefully hidden "smoking sections" (in this case it was a back alley of "Britain" at Epcot). I bummed a Marlboro menthol off a wonderful older couple from Pennsylvania and had a wonderful chat with a young newlywed couple from Minneapolis.