Once the Smoke Clears, the Need for an Introvert Retreat Is Plain

The price you pay for admission may be high—perhaps too high at times. But the pull of the introvert retreat is only natural if you’re an introvert yourself.

When I was a kid, my dad would disappear into his garage multiple times a day to smoke cigarettes, particularly in the years after he decided—or was told by my mom, I’m not sure—to cease and desist when it came to smoking in the house.

I was Dad’s procurement department. He would give me five bucks most days and send me to the store up the road with standing instructions to buy two packs of Winston Ultra Lights 100’s.

The $5 actually covered the tab at the time. In fact, there was always a bit of change, which I got to keep for services rendered.

No one cared that I was a child buying cigarettes. It was the 1970s, and the family that ran the store knew us and, more specifically, my dad.

So it became pro forma for me to show up and ask for the usual, which I would then dutifully deliver back to Dad so that he’d be set for a day, perhaps a day and a half.

I thought nothing of any of this.

Smoking was altogether normal to me and my existence.

Surrounded by Smoke

I didn’t smoke, of course.

Wait …

I did smoke, actually—thanks to the secondhand smoke that perpetually surrounded me.

Dad still smoked in the house at times, and he smoked in the car (with us kids in it), too.

Whenever we went to relatives’ houses—especially my Uncle Dick and Aunt Betty’s place on most Sundays—we would open the door into a kitchen or living room that was pre-adorned with a lingering haze accented by ashtrays filled with smoldering cigarette butts.

Here in Minnesota, we sometimes end up with smoke-filled skies because of wildfires burning well to our north and west.

That’s what it was like in the homes of every relative I knew on my dad’s side.

Permahaze.

So the notion that my dad went out to the garage all the time to smoke was so obvious to me that I never questioned its accuracy.

But now I’m not so sure.

An Introvert Retreat

Like introverted father like introverted son, I will often retreat too, though not to light up.

When our kids are having yet another pointless dinnertime debate about a pressing matter like, for example, why the local public schools should serve Kentucky Fried Chicken, I often go to our bedroom and close the door to get away from it all.

When family holiday gatherings get to be too much, I find a spare bedroom, a den, an out-of-the-way spot outside with the dog—somewhere, anywhere to go read a book or just sit and think.

So it occurs to me now, all these years after my cigarette-buying days ended, that maybe my dad wasn’t really going to the garage to smoke. Not entirely, at least.

He was also going out there simply to be.

Cigarettes were largely—though not exclusively, of course, given their addictive properties—nothing more than his admission ticket.

Dad wasn’t in to garage smoking solely for the smoking.

He was in to it for the garage, too.

He was in to it for the peace and quiet it offered from four kids, Mom, the dog, the many cats that came and went, the TV, the bills and the work stress—everyone and everything.

Ultimately, garage smoking probably helped kill my dad. He had a massive heart attack while he was driving home from the undoubtedly also-smoke-filled casino on July 16, 2015.

But in many ways—ways that make perfect sense for the introvert he was—garage smoking always kept him alive, too.