We All Smelled Like Cigarettes Anyway

Growing Up Around Smokers in Indonesia

There are certain smells that instantly transport you back to childhood. Fresh rain. Old books. Fried noodles from a roadside stall. Cajuput oil.

And then there is cigarette smoke.

Not because I wanted to remember it. It was simply… everywhere.

Growing up in Indonesia in the 1980s and 1990s, I don’t remember anyone asking whether smoking was allowed. There was always somebody smoking—a father, an uncle, the neighbour, the man waiting for the bus, a wedding guest, someone at the family gathering, or a stranger in a restaurant. Sometimes I think even the ashtrays had ashtrays.

My own father smoked. Some of my friends smoked in high school, and others smoked in university too. I remember sitting in the university cafeteria, walking across campus, or waiting outside lecture halls. Smoking wasn’t allowed inside the buildings, but just outside? There always seemed to be someone lighting another cigarette as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Perhaps it was.

For them.

I, on the other hand, spent much of my childhood asking one very serious question.

If smokers enjoy cigarette smoke so much, why don’t they keep all of it? Why does everyone else have to join in?

It seemed like the only product where the customer paid for it… and everyone nearby received a free sample.

As a child, I was convinced there had to be a better solution. Surely someone could invent a smoker’s helmet—a fully enclosed helmet where all the smoke stayed inside. The smoker could enjoy every last puff while the rest of us enjoyed fresh air.

Everybody wins.

I still think it was a brilliant invention.

Sadly, no investors came forward.

I never understood the appeal. Not just the cigarettes themselves, but the way the smell quietly took over everything. Clothes. Hair. Curtains. Cars. Somehow, before long, everything smelled like smoke.

Even today, if I catch that familiar scent, my brain immediately travels back to childhood. Not with fondness, but with a dramatic internal, “Yuck.”

Looking back now, it’s amazing how normal it all felt. Children simply adapted. Families adapted. Restaurants adapted. If you didn’t like the smoke, you were usually the one expected to move.

Thankfully, things are much better today than they used to be. Many restaurants, shopping malls, airports, and public buildings are now smoke-free. More people understand what secondhand smoke does, especially to children. I’m genuinely grateful that my younger children are growing up in a world where breathing someone else’s cigarette smoke isn’t considered an unavoidable part of everyday life.

And yet, every now and then, someone lights a cigarette in a playground. Or near a family picnic. Or on a mountain where people came to enjoy fresh air. Or in a park full of children riding their bicycles. Or beside a pregnant woman. Or near elderly people enjoying an evening walk.

And I still find myself thinking exactly what I thought as a child.

“Really?”

Perhaps that’s what surprises me most. Not that people choose to smoke—that is their choice. It’s forgetting that the smoke rarely stays with the person who chose it. It quietly becomes everyone else’s air too.

Maybe that’s why this memory has stayed with me all these years. It’s not really about cigarettes. It’s about consideration. About remembering that we share spaces with one another. About realizing that some choices don’t stop with the person making them.

Good manners are often found in the smallest acts of thoughtfulness, especially the ones that make life a little easier for the people around us.

Although…

I still think the smoker’s helmet was an excellent idea.

Perhaps I was simply ahead of my time.