Happy Birthday Winnie Langley
Happy birthday wishes to Winnie Langley on her 100th birthday… and her 170,000th cigarette.
Ms. Langley began smoking just days after WWI broke out in June 1914. She was seven — that’s right, 7 — years old at the time. Since then, she’s smoked five cigarettes a day, a habit she says many people took up around that time to help them calm their nerves.
Smoking wasn’t considered a nasty habit back then as it is these days. “There were not all the the health warnings like there are today when I started. It was the done thing.”
Langley has outlived her husband, Robert, as well as her son, Donald, who passed away two years ago at age 72.
She has no intention of quitting, either.
As to why she’s never suffered any of the health problems attributed to a long-time smoking habit, Langley says the answer is simple: she’s never inhaled.
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At her age, I’d be smoking 15 and drinking martinis, too.
Do you ever lie in bed at night and count the days and years and decades? And think of it as one third, one half… of your life being over?
How many people can lie down at 70 and hope for 30 more years? It boggles my mind.
Awesome post…it’s my Mum’s birthday today. Nobody really knows how old she is…she stopped counting at 29.
Happy Birthday, Expat’s Mum!
Latte Girl: Yeah, sometimes I do. Then I get to thinking how many years I spent waiting for the fun to start and realize that it’s supposed to be happening now.