I use to have an office-mate who frequently begged me to light up. “Pleeeeeeze,” she’d plead, “you look soooooo cool when you smoke.” Hmmmm. Perhaps she had ulterior motives? Like maybe she wanted me to cough and wheeze and keel over in my cubicle so she could put on her big girl undies and do my job?

Nah. I think she genuinely meant it. But the problem was, and I think maybe still is, I agreed with her. I’d say that it’s my dirty little secret, except I’ve blogged about it before: If someone is young and beautiful, or old and beautiful, I usually think they look about 1000 times hotter if they have a ciggy dangling from their mouth.

Don’t agree? Google “Paul Newman smoking” and then get back to me.

I was never addicted to cigarettes; I smoked literally 1 to 2 per week for years. Well, maybe I was little more smoke-y during the time-frame I toiled for a massive French beauty company, and went to Europe a lot for my job. (Paris is basically cloaked in a giant Gitane cloud.) And also right after 9/11, when I was convinced there were terrorists hiding in the potted plants along Park Avenue.

My point is that I didn’t roll out of bed every morning and fire up a Marlboro Light. There was no physical craving. Rather, they were my little Friday night treat or my mid-freakout calm-down crutch. And I haven’t had one in years.

I just find it really bizarre-o that I can be trucking along in my smoke-free life and – shazzam! – I’ll be hit with the urge. Usually, it’s triggered by a paparazzi image of some glam creature puffing away. Which is why, duh, those are rarer and rarer these days. Most celebs have been shamed into not smoking in public, and I think that’s probably for the best.

I’m really happy that kids today don’t get bombarded with lots of intentional media images of smoking. Even when it sort of fits what’s going on in a show or movie. For example, I just read that the upcoming television series Pan Am will not show any of the groovy stewardess ladies lighting up. Despite the fact that it’s set in the Seventies, when everybody smoked.

For sure, all that government intervention seems to be working. Admittedly, my in-house focus group is pretty small, but the one tiny people-person I’m in frequent contact with doesn’t find ciggies cool at all.

“People who smoke will get dead,” says the Wee Lass, who just wandered into my office and asked about this picture of Kate on my computer monitor. “That’s why I’m never going to smoke.”

On Friday, when she and I were on a Mommy + Me field trip to Victorian Gardens, we came out of the subway just a few blocks away from Central Park South. And in the hustle and bustle, I spotted an older guy with one of those tiny apron thingies around his neck – the kind that covers an artificial voice box that is usually a tell-tale sign of emphysema, the disease my own mother died of.

Talk about a reality check. Every time this guy wanted to chat with the others in his group, he had to press on that box. He seemed cheerful enough, but that has to be a bummer, right? Pressing on a box on your throat and sounding like ET whenever you want to chime in on the conversation?

Not to mention the fact that he probably won’t be with us much longer.

I know, I know – I’m making assumptions; people get voice boxes removed – and emphysema – from other causes besides smoking. But it’s pretty rare. Mostly what happens is that people who smoke eventually get tons and tons of horrible physical problems. And then they get dead.