If you read my last column you know I'm not a fan of the snow. Yet as I write this column, I'm covered in a fresh dusting of the white stuff after stepping outside to have a cigarette break. I wanted a cigarette, and I won't smoke indoors - out of courtesy to others as well as to avoid the awful smell of smoke trapped in anything - so my options were slim.

I stood on the back steps, smoking and getting snowed on, silently telling myself that it may be time to make an actual choice about smoking instead of riding the proverbial fence.

My relationship with cigarettes has always been a strange one. From a young age I was fascinated by the idea of smoking, and would engage in questionable activities I'm less than proud of as a result, from sneaking drags of my father's burned-out cigarettes to buying them from machines before I was of legal age. As a teen, depending on which friend I was hanging out with and whether or not they smoked, I got up to smoking about half a pack of cigarettes a day.

Yet it never became an all-encompassing habit. There were months where I wouldn't feel like smoking and never bought a pack. During soccer season I would quit altogether without a second thought. Even during my smoking periods, I never felt intense cravings for cigarettes, and I've never smoked more than a half-pack a day; sometimes the number was as low as two to three cigarettes daily.

But this seemingly nonchalant relationship with cigarettes has always led people to ask me: "Why don't you just quit altogether?" It's a fair enough question, to which I've quickly responded, "Well, I don't really smoke enough to quit." I'd also rationalize that it's my only so-called vice, and explain to people that I don't even smoke for the nicotine, I smoke for the action. "If they made smoke-free cigarettes, I'd buy them in bulk," I promised. But as you get older I'd like to think you get wiser, and you therefore scrutinize your life choices a little more closely. Reasoning that previously seemed totally logical to you can start to look a little thin upon careful examination. So I'm beginning to wonder if down the road I really want to feel the effects of a bad habit I told myself I didn't engage in frequently enough to bother quitting.

I've seen enough family members die from smoking-related diseases to know how the story usually ends for those who make cigarettes a part of daily life. It's also hard to rationalize spending $6 on a pack of cigarettes when I really "don't even want to smoke that much," or so I say.

Growing up and taking responsibility for your future may not always be a picnic - it requires looking in the actual mirror, not the distorted funhouse one where all your shoddy excuses make sense. But when I confront the truth of my on-again, off-again relationship with smoking, I realize that I've run out of legitimate answers to the question, "Why don't you just quit?"

I'm thinking that it might be time to give cigarettes the metaphoric peace sign, not for soccer season and not for right now, but for myself, once and for all.

LAUREN CARTER, a frequent Sun Chronicle contributor, can be reached at lauren-carter@hotmail.com.