For my seventeenth birthday my father gave me half a pack of cigarettes and a dirty shot glass from my mother's collection.  He dropped them on my bloodstained carpet and stood in my room while I sat on my bed in silence, listening to him stumble over meaningless words, taking a minute and a half to say nothing at all while Frank Sinatra crooned Come Fly With Me in the next room.  

Then he left.

His breath stank of whiskey and his words stung my lungs and made my eyes water the next day as the  fire and brimstone from his lips slithered maliciously across my face:  "Why aren't you smoking, Andy?"