When I was a young and impressionable, nothing said manly more than a huge dip of snuff.  I grew up around cows and country stuff.  Men were men.  You could always tell if a person was a man by the dip in his mouth.  I’ve even met a few women that were men.  They could dip with the  best of them.  I know a guy that’s gay and dips.  He’s a man.  I started participating in rodeos when I was fifteen.  You could not rodeo and not dip.  Hell, they gave the stuff away at the rodeos.  You could get rolls and rolls of all kinds of smokeless tobacco.  I was determined to be a man.  Around thirteen years of age I took my first chaw of tobacco.  The world spun and I puked.  Being a man was tough.  I kept chewing and puking until the puking finally stopped.  I was a chewer.  Most days when I was outside I had a nice big bump in my jaw and was spitting perfect amber missiles through the air.  Life was good.  I even learned to like the taste.  Here’s the way things went.  You took a chew and you told a good story and you spat.  Yes, I said spat.  Of course you could get your ass kicked for saying a word like spat, but it’s the correct word and since I quit dipping three weeks ago, I don’t feel manly anymore, so yes, we spat.  Tobacco wasn’t good for just telling a story either.  It was good for doing hard work.  Spitting and pitching heavy hay bales up on a trailer seemed to go well together.  Of course you have to spit when you ride a horse.  Oh hell, I forgot, you hardly can’t fish at all unless you’re spitting tobacco everywhere.  I can’t quit fishing so I’ve substituted the next best thing, drinking.  It’s not the same though.  The drinking makes me want to dip. 

        So I’m chewing away as a young teenager and I noticed that a lot of the older folks were the chewers.  The younger hipper crowd were dippers.  I immediately gave up chewing for dipping.  The puking wasn’t quite as bad and I got over it pretty quickly.  I was a dipper.  Dipping and chewing are quite different.  When you chew chewing tobacco you actually chew it.  I know that sounds a little redundant, but I’m a thorough person.  A chewers chews the tobacco leaves and thus turns his, or her, teeth and lips turd brown.  You generate a lot of spittle as you chew so you get a lot more spitting action in.  Dippers place finely ground tobacco between the cheek and gums.  You don’t generate near as much juice but you don’t turn your teeth and lips turd brown either.  Plus the dip makes a much smaller bulge in your mouth.  Usually a bigger bulge, of course, would mean a person is more of a man but not in this particular situation.  A nice tobacco bulge slightly off center just big enough for people to see the top of the snuff jutting out of the lip, perfect dip.  You were a man and you were cool if you dipped.  It sounds stupid now I know but that’s the way it really was for me back then.  That’s the way it seemed to me.  My wife pointed out how bad it is for me and how disgusting it really is for almost twenty years now.  Recently I had a little issue with my heart and I decided to quit.  Yes I know it was disgusting.  Especially the spit cups everywhere.  Warm cups full of tobacco spit in the truck, in the car, in the house.  Yes I know it was disgusting.  I was addicted and it was part of who I thought I was.  Yes I knew it could kill me.  It still might.  It’s hard to give up something that you perceive as a symbol of what you are.  Add the fact that it’s a very addictive drug and you get damn near thirty years worth of spitting, and spilling spit cups everywhere.  I once volunteered to baby sit the three year old son of some close friends of mine.  I never told them that he took a big drink from my spit cup that night.  Yes I know it’s stupid.  I’m done with it.  I’ve quit.  I’m done.  I wrote this whole thing and never spit once.  It wasn’t as satisfying.