I did a
good deed today. Okay, actually not. In fact I was a real bitch but I did take her mind off the problem for a
few minutes. Here’s the story: Walking to the library today on relatively clean
pavement because the library is a bit off by itself, I met a girl who was most
likely leaving the library & mad as a hornet. She was shading to purple
right there on the sidewalk. No idea what made her so mad, but what made it
worse was that she was out of cigarettes. She clearly wanted to shove one in
her face & light up but instead came up with an empty pack – which she
wadded up to a ball & threw to the ground, whammo!
As I passed
I oinked, not actually like a pig – I am a lady of a certain age, after all –
just said “Oink oink”.
“Same to
you!” she hollered, & followed this with a stream of abuse I didn’t catch
but could figure out for myself. See – now she had me to be furious at too,
scrappy old bat making fun of her need. Redirecting anger – isn’t that healthy?
No, it’s not. Yes, I grinned all the way home anyway. Mea culpa.
A few years
ago I worked for an idealistic travel agency that sent people out as volunteers
all over the place. It was really interesting & I admired the people –
especially the young people – who paid good money to go work their tails off
someplace with no hot water. Once 3 young Frenchmen landed in Vietnam just as a
spring flood struck & they were marooned in their hostel for several days.
You could hear their emails yelling, they were so frustrated because they couldn’t get cigarettes. (Food
was barely mentioned.) Our German cooperation partner & I had a lot of
online fun about it, but my boss, who lit up every time things got complicated,
wasn’t laughing. I understood, of course. When you’re in a stressful situation,
that’s when you really need the nicotine, just like the angry girl who was
library-livid today.
The thing
is, the rest of us are so annoyed by the general run of smokers that our
sympathy is all used up. I remember walking home from a café with a smoker
friend who thought she could buy cigs at the train station but could not. She
assaulted every person we passed trying to cadge a smoke. Unsuccessfully. It
was like the time my little brother thought it was a hoot to wear a silly lady’s
hat one of our grandmother’s friends forgot & I walked on the other side of
the street, as if that fooled anyone. I guess it was just the demonstration I
was going for. You do that when you’re big sis. I didn’t do it with my smoker
friend, but the urge was there.
When I
first got to Denmark in 1973, half of the population smoked but it seemed like
more because they had total dominance. If you asked them not to you were
violating their rights & acting prissy as well. If you wanted to take
pictures at a party it had to happen in the first hour, after that there was a
blue pall you could barely see through, no matter how many children or
asthmatics were present. There were already smoking laws in the US & I was
appalled at the Danes & their cigs, but always impressed at how clean the
streets were. Now there are also smoking laws here, thank goodness, but the
streets are no longer so clean. Back then they smoked indoors with ashtrays all
around. Now they’re out in the cold & too many smokers just drop their
butts where they take the last heave. I know they are a minority but they make
a big mess. Maybe they know they are a pain & the reason smokers are the
new lepers. Many smokers feel terribly abused. I hope they know they which of
their soulmates to thank.
Oink oink –
man, that felt good!
Happy New
Year!
