Man: “Excuse me! Just so ya know, you can’t smoke anywhere on school property.”
Me: “Okay. Sorry ’bout that.”
That happened to me on the way to work this morning.
I walk from the bus stop, cutting through the campus of a high school vocational skills center. The cut I make is just right along the edge of the place, along the edge of the parking lot. It’s a walking thoroughfare kind of; in fact at the same moment today, there was a fellow jogging through in the opposite direction.
What I wonder is, did this minor school official — probably head of grounds maintenance from the looks of him — did he lie in wait for me there on my way through to work? I mean, I walk there five days a week, at the very same time. Did someone tip him off that there’s this man in a baseball cap that smokes a cigarette on campus every day? What the hell is his motivation for protecting his campus in this way from the seductive evils of my three transient puffs of smoke? I picture whole classrooms of kids — soon-to-be line cooks, auto-mechanics, bank tellers, and cosmetologists — pressing their faces against the glass wishing they could just be like me for seven minutes. Nah.
Anyway, here’s my plan: tomorrow, I’m not changing my habitual on-the-way-to-work smoke. Except for one thing: I’m just not going to take a drag as I transit the campus. If the “excuse me” guy is there I’ll calmly tell him, “Yes sir. Of course. But you see, I’m not smoking on school property; I’m carrying this lit cigarette to the other side of school property.”
