stardust

I'm back! It was hard there for a few seconds, but I know that this is the right decision to make.

One of my co-workers is a smoker. She's 28, has two children, is married and is a smoker. She recently came back from Macedonia (Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia which you have to say if you give them points in the Eurovision Song Contest) and she's coughing. Imagine the worst smoke-cough you know - it's like that, except the blood. She's not really there yet.
Me, H1 and H2 reacted and told her to quit so she doesn't harm herself anymore and she gave the standard answer "I'll quit when the cigarettes I bought are finished". Poor addicted woman. This actually isn't the worst part though. The worst part is that the bitch (you know the bitch) tells her that "you can die from so many things - why worry about smoking? My mother-in-law has smoked since she was 15 and when she went to the hospital for a yearly check-up they told her that her lungs was in perfect shape and that there was no way she could be a smoker." Is there any need to say that we went ballistic? H1 called her "fucking stupid" and me and H2 just sat quiet - not really knowing what we actually heard. Since the bitch can't take any critisism she went home from work two hours later. And stayed home the next day. And the next. She was back today. I was ready for her. I googled pictures of smokers' lungs and found an image with one healthy and one lung sick with lungcancer, printed the picture in colour and went into our meeting/breakfast/dinner/whatever-room, put the picture in front of the smoker and said "this is for you - I think the right lung pretty much equals yours at the moment". The bitch who was there immediately said "they really are after smokers these days" and I answered "if a person is so fucking stupid that he or she smokes and hurts themself they deserve it". She said something about how people can smoke and still be healthy and I went on "I've lived with a smoker for a long time, I've seen how they hurt themselves and others". After that I went away so I wouldn't strangle her. How can someone be so stupid? Alright that you don't want to agree with me, but how can one honestly say that "smoking isn't that dangerous - there are worse things"? Just because you can die when you cross a road doesn't mean you have to go out and SEARCH for danger!
The poor addicted smoker didn't say much when we had our shift-meeting later - she just kept touching the paper with the picture. She usually speaks A LOT. I think I'm onto something.

Now... where did I put the brains?