#170 Tough Luck

It was one of those cold mornings. You know, kind of clammy and kind of foggy. It was the opposite of that statement: Yeah it’s hot but it’s a dry heat. Cause it was cold, but it was a wet cold. There’s nothing like a fall Washington morning to really chill you to the bone. It feels like the cold is just seeping in, deep into your core, like some freezing lineament that paralyzes your muscles and leaves your flesh goose-pimpling like a plucked turkey.
I stood there shivering at the street edge, looking for an address, and noticed this guy standing at the bus stop, lightly dressed, apparently none the worse for the weather.
“Cold, huh?” I said. He just shrugged his shoulders. I envied him the ability to move. “You must be pretty tough,” I said, pulling my coat a little tighter. He shrugged again. The possibility that he was an off-duty mime skittered across my mind. “Got a tough job?”
“No,” he finally replied, “I work for the state.”
“Raised in Alaska?”
“Nah, I’m just a smoker.”
Oh yeah, that explains it. Vestibule toughness. Year after year, exposed to the scorn of his fellow workers, the inconvenience of going outside, and the ravages of the weather—the blistering heat and the freezing cold and all the Washington wet in between—you just gotta develop a tough skin.
“What do you think of the new law?” I asked. Washington newest initiative-law calls for smokers to be outdoors and at least 25 feet from any bus shelter, building entrance or air intake vent.
He shrugged again. “You know what,” he said. “I don’t suppose it makes a damn bit of difference whether I‘m wet, cold, and freezing in a vestibule or under a tree. But what I aim to do is blow so much smoke up the underside of my soaked umbrella that when I bring it back inside the whole damn office will smell like a wet ashtray. And next session they’ll have to pass an “anti-umbrella” bill. And then I’ll blow it into my coat, and next session they’ll have to pass and “anti-coat” bill and then a “must take a quick shower” bill and then a “must wear a deodorizer around my neck” bill. And you know what? They’ll still let buses and cars full of sanctimonious, hypocritical, do-gooders belch all their crap into the air.”
Just then, as if to punctuate his tirade, the bus pulled up, belching clouds of “bio”-diesel exhaust. As the lightly-clad smoker ascended the steps I couldn’t help but notice the buses’ exhaust billowing through the foggy air and, as if by cosmic karma magic, find its way right into the intake vent of the building nearby. America ya gotta love it.