In response to Ed Abbey--Desert Solitaire, The First Morning.
A parable. Hello John and Lu, I smoke. I always have. At least, I can't remember the time when I didn't. It is a part of me, like breathing (just like it in fact), and a big part of my "cultural heritage" if you could use such a fancy term for my depression-era share-cropper, southern red-neck combined with Choctaw, Cherokee, and Comanche, Southern Baptist, bible-thumping, black Irish ancestry. I am descended, in other words, from a line of Okies, or poor-white trash, or reservation Indians, or whatever other term you'd like to use, all of which are derogatory, but that's ok with me. I have an 81 year old aunt, Daddy's little sister, who can still smoke me under the table, and that takes some doing because I smoke a lot. It is no longer, of course, socially acceptable. The social unacceptability of smoking started in California some years ago and has spread all the way to Texas. I think sometime around 1986 was the last time I was able to smoke in peace at my desk. I've had lots of jobs since then, and even put myself through college, but all this occurred while huddling with a few other hardy smokers in the rain, or under an awning if we were lucky, in freezing cold and suffocating heat year end and year out. The weather is not so nice as California's anywhere else. When you do this you meet lots of people you probably wouldn't even talk to otherwise. They're not your type, you know. You hear about people's political beliefs, their religion, their job certainly since that's why we're all out there in the freezing wind, their kids, their ex-husbands and wives, and their personal tragedies. It's a real education. Smoking outside with people that would otherwise be total strangers day after day, at 10, noon, and 2, for as many years as you end up working at a place is a real education as opposed to the kind you're supposed to get. What I've learned from about 30 years of doing this is that everybody has personal pain. It doesn't matter if you are the CIO or the payroll clerk. Smoking is a great leveler. You meet them all, every day, three times a day. Over the years I've developed some listening skills. I can hear the pain in somebody's voice or see it in their posture. They may be talking about who won the Cowboy's game last night, but I hear something else. There are a lot of different types of people, and of course, everybody's unique, but in a lot of ways the same. They fall into categories. There are a finite number of ways people can choose from for dealing with their pain. Down here in the south, the safest choice is to join a church. People who do this tend to be bright and a little overly cheerful but don't cross them. Everybody with any sense knows that the fastest way to make an enemy out of a church-goer is to admit that you are not. One of the guys I smoke with regularly is an Indian, from India, that is. I work with a lot of them along with people from various places in Europe, the Far East and everywhere else where you can get a 401b visa. They're nice people for the most part. Nicer than us. There's a fundamental difference between Americans and everybody else. I confided in my Indian friend one time that I was an atheist. What a mistake! A few days later several of us were smoking and he brought it up. He said it out loud! For him, it was a natural, casual remark. He was totally oblivious to the damage this kind of information in the wrong hands could do. Down here, people have lost their jobs for less. The alarm bells started going off in my head and I was actually scared. I wanted so much to tell him to just shut up! Fortunately, there weren't any southern religious types in the group that day, but it could have been worse, and I could see the warning glances in the eyes of all the other Southerners. This is dangerous territory. Down here you never say something like that. Them are fightin' words. It was all my fault, of course. I should never have told him that, but he seemed very open and accepting of such things. Problem is, it never occurred to me that he was clueless about just how dangerous this could be as a public statement in Texas, or Arkansas (where I grew up) or anywhere else south of the Mason-Dixon Line - and probably a good number of places north of it too. When you live down here you quickly learn to cater to religious people. You sort of pander like a sycophant. It's the safest way. I've been prayed over, invited to "pack the pew" night, looked at askance, and maligned at various times over the years enough to know it's best just to not bring it up at all, and if you get backed into a corner, just smile sweetly and lie, lie, lie your way out of it. Why is this so? Mary - The most important thing you will ever make is a realization. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
