Like a pediatrician rounding on cystic fibrosis children in the hospital and smoking at their bedside. That's what the early 1980s were like.

i remember ashtrays on the arm of every airplane seat!

Until she left home, my wife didn't realise that normal non-smoking households don't have to mop their walls.

When I was a kid the old people in my family all chain smoked when we went out to eat. I hated eating with them because of that. I seriously thought my aunt was 15 years older than my mom because of her chain smoking and alcoholism aged her. Found out after she died she was only 3 years older.

What I remember most is coming back from concerts reeking of cigarettes and having to immediately throw my clothes in the wash and take a shower. Going to shows got so much more enjoyable after they banned indoor smoking at clubs.

When I was maybe 3 (maybe 4 - it’s a little fuzzy), I remember safety pinning a towel around the collar of my shirt so I could be like Superman (we had recently seen it in the theater). The towel also had frayed ends, and ended up in the ashtray along side my mom’s cigarette. I remember my mom panicking trying to get those safety pins off when the towel caught fire. We never were allowed to safety pin towels to our clothes again after that. 😂

Also I love how my kids know the cigarette lighter in the car as a place to plug in a car charger and nothing else.

Yep. The 80’s were absolutely horrible if you were bothered by smoke. There’s a reason why a lot of us 80’s kids “had asthma”, which magically disappeared when everything went non-smoking in the 90’s.

Smoking was just so pervasive here in Europe in the 80’s, it’s impossible for people to understand if you didn’t experience it first hand.

Fun fact: instead of cupholders, 1970s cars would proudly advertise the number of ashtrays they had equipped the car with, usually 1 within reach of every seat. This number was equally important as horsepower or price on marketing materials.

I remember that in pre-school in around 1990 we made clay ashtrays for father's day. My father did not smoke but they told me to make one anyway...

I still regularly marvel about how great it is not to have to quarantine my clothes and have a shower as soon as I come home from the pub or restaurant, and it has been 20 years since it was banned around here.

I'm old enough to remember when smoking was banned in bars/clubs in the UK. It went from a musky smell to body odour, and it took practically all venues by surprise.

Now, I'm so glad that indoors smoking was banned. Looking back, it was fucking gross, and while sadly lots of people now vape indoors it was a huge improvement to basically be able to actually breathe in those places.

Fuck smoking.

I remember bars so blue with smoke you couldn't see across the room.

I wonder how much that affected the life expectancy of those kids

If you want to experience this sensation today, travel to Russia or Japan. Yes, Japan. People don’t talk enough about how prevalent smoking still is over there. As a non-smoker, the number of restaurants or cafes I could go to without getting sick was diminished by about 90%.

Taking an international flight where half the plane is smoking. Those were good times, especially in Greece where they loved smoking even more than the Americans.

Oh good I'm still youngish I AM old enough that I remember being really excited when the headlines on our newspaper said smoking was banned indoors! Not even a "smoking" section in a restaurant anymore unless it was patio/outdoors maybe

I moved to São Paulo recently and discovered that people here still smoke on clubs. Is disgusting coming back from party with the hair and clothes smelling like cigarettes.

I remember a beloved fish-and-chips restaurant in the area where I grew up that had, in addition to fun cartoons of a clam introducing various dishes, smoke stains all along the edge of the ceiling. It was that bad... funny to think that it was soon after smoking was banned that the place closed down--maybe it never actually tasted good but nobody could tell??

"Smoking or non?"

So the grocery store in my little town growing up was the last hold out. They had ash trays in their buggies until they legally couldn't, then kept the buggies for years after.

My parents didn't smoke but that's literally how I knew the babysitter was gone and my parents were home from a night out.

Just go to Europe to relive that part of the 90s

We're talking about the US here, right?

Im 24 and I got the tail end of this with Gen X smokers, motherfucker I can still smell their shitty marlboros. At least go with scavenged WW2 ration cigarettes like a civilized person.

Yeah I know I've been to Europe

I'm old enough to remember a home visit from my GP for childhood asthma and he was prepping his pipe with tobacco while talking to me