My HOF – A Single Dad’s Journey To QUIT

I was walking up to house one day after school and I seen my older brother and one of his friends sitting on the curb with their heads between their knees and asked them what the heck they were doing and my brother replied with that they were getting buzzed and seeing who can make the biggest spit puddle. My brother looked up at me all dazed and hands me this pouch of red man leaf tobacco and says “here you want to try it?” My brother was around 15 at the time so that would put me at 10 yrs old. I took a wad of that stuff out of the pouch and put in cheek like my brother had showed me and then sat down on the curb and proceeded to spit and make a huge ol puddle of spit. I remember standing up and the whole world was just spinning like crazy.

Fast forward a few yrs my brother introduced me yet again to another leafy pouch chew “Levi Garrett”. My brothers friend used to some how get pouches of this stuff and we would walk the rail road tracks all summer long chewing and spitting looking for ponds to fish in.

I only chewed the red man chew that first day and only chewed on the Levi Garret that one summer and never touched the stuff again until I was 19. At that time I was working as a mud tender tending mud for a group of brick layers that all chewed different flavors of skoal. Me wanting to fit in with the guys and them showing me how to lay some bricks, I was bumming the different flavors of skoal from these guys until I chose to stick with wintergreen. Chewed this for about a yr when they hired a new mud tender and I ran out of chew that day and asked the new guy if he chewed so I can bum a dip and he handed me a can of Copenhagen snuff. Once I took that first dip of that shit I was hooked to it and that was my choice of dip for the next 10 yrs or so until I found out that the long cut Copenhagen was easier to hide.

After getting a degree in information technology, I started to work at the Sprint campus and since Copenhagen was owning my life at that time and I had to figure a way to get that dip in my lip without it be noticed. So that’s when I made the switch to long cut. The crap was always in my lip, shitting, mowing, drinking, driving, fishing, hunting and even swimming sometimes going through a tin a day. As my son started to get older he was noticing and telling me that I couldn’t do anything with out.

A little over 2 yrs ago my son’s mom whom I was with for 10 yrs went stupid on us and left. In that two yrs my son has only seen his mom just a few times so that pretty much leaves him with one full time parent. Anyways, the day I decided to quit was the day my son was at baseball practice and one of his team mates found that empty can of skoal and the coach huddle the boys up and told them how bad this stuff was and to never do it. After the coaches speech, my son then tells me that he needs me and doesn’t want to see me die and he really wanted me to quit. That hit me like a ton of bricks, I then realized how I do need to be there for him and as of now I am his only parent. I wanna be there to watch him play sports, play catch with him. All the things I didn’t get to do with my father. I can’t let this shit run my life anymore 15 yrs is long enough, it needed to be gone. I would like to thank all of you here at KTC.
–Matt

NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org forum member dbh68stang