Rabbits, Death, Etc.

I've never really liked dead things. One time, I had a rabbit named Grace because, of course I had a rabbit named Grace. Anyway, she died. I was about eight years old when I found her chillin in her rabbit pin, stiff as a board. We got her from the flea market near our house where most things are half dead to begin with, so it was kind of a miracle that she lived as long as she did. Anyway, when I found Grace, I grabbed her and attempted to shake her into life again, but it was pointless. Grace was dead, and I was breaking down. To be fair, I had a pretty ugly road with death at a young age because my mom's parents were 46 and 60 when she was born, so a huge portion of my family starting dying before I could really understand what that meant. That, and I had watched Titanic pretty recently, and that whole Rose lives to be really old and then dies thing really got to me as well.
Because death happened so often, I didn't really understand why it happened--to me, death was kind of like getting a cold. People got death, and then you just kind of died. The whole thing was really unfortunate, but it happened, and in my mind, it was only a matter of time before I caught it myself. I carried Grace to resting place that my parents dug for her, and I said a prayer over her tiny rabbit body, and then I placed her in the grave. I wiped the tears from my face, and then I realized: I just wiped DEATH all over my face. Great.
As soon as it hit me, I lost it--like full blown 8-year-old panic attack. My mom grabbed me and tried to explain that my rabbit was with mamaw and papaw and all the other half-dead animals they had gotten me at the flea market, included but not limited to: my dog Sable, my dog Roxie, my cat Tiger, both of my turtles Jo Jo and Urkle, my dad's old dog Amos, and a gerbil that I had once named Conway that died because he got a penis infection. I'm not kidding. But I wasn't worried about Grace's eternal soul, because her name was Grace for God's sake. I was worried about my fragile mortal body that had been exposed to death--not just exposed really, but slathered in it. I wiped my face with dead rabbit hands, and clearly, if that wasn't terminal then I don't really know what could be.
My parents spent the next 16 years trying to persuade me that people don't die by being exposed to death, but I'm not entirely sure that they're right. Regardless, I'm still here, fighting the good fight and trying to stay away from death and all his friends. I actually became kind of numb to the whole death situation. It's been years since I had been to a funeral because a whole generation of my family passed away before I was 16 years old. Instead, I just focus on the random diseases that could kill me instead of actually catching death itself. I call my mom weekly or so to check in because I've convinced myself that I have anemia or a tumor on a lymph node. For a while it had gotten out of hand, and then she eventually called me a hypochondriac. Now, I've blocked WebMD on my browser, and my fear of sickness and death has gotten easier.
Funerals, at this point, are just hurdles. Very sad hurdles, but hurdles, and as my generation has grown up, we've all also grown apart. I haven't seen my entire family together in one place in a long time, let alone the super-extended family. We never did a great job of keeping up with one another because people were having babies or going to jail or in my weird case, relocating to a new location entirely. But I was able to make a stop home after work trip out to California, and when I arrived my mom asked me the dreaded question. "My nephew Stanley died. Will you go to the funeral with me?" I mean, of course I would go to the funeral with her, but the first words out of my mouth were, "I had a cousin named Stanley?" That's the tricky part of being separated from some of your cousins by 30-40 years--sometimes you don't know they exist until they've passed away or in the newspaper for doing something really absurd.
As I pulled what I imagine was probably an illegal U-turn in the middle of the funeral home parking lot, my mom said, "Oh look. There's Roger Dale. I wonder how life's treating him now that he's out of prison." I wasn't sure if she was being sincere or just being a smart ass. Either way, I chose not to recognize it as I attempted to pull my dad's giant truck into a parking spot made for a smart car.  That, and for some reason, I kind of wanted to be friends with Roger Dale. He's one of the few people in my family that's around my age--and even though he was supposedly an accessory to an attempted murder, it's nice having friends, ya know? I finally got the truck parked, and my mom looked at me and said, "No more than 20 minutes. I'm serious. 20 minutes--in and out. Let's go. Oh, and your aunt Wanda got you a souvenir from her trip to the Amish country, so don't forget to grab it before we leave."
I wasn't expecting to go to a funeral while I was in town, but then again, I don't think anyone ever expects to go to a funeral. It's not something you etch into your planner months ahead of time. Stanley was 55 when he died, which is really complicated to explain because that makes him older than my mom. But in short, my mom had siblings that were legitimately having children before she was even born, so she was an aunt baby.
As we walked up to the funeral home, a whole bunch of people sat on the porch in white rocking chairs that overlooked the parking lot/duck pond combo below. I didn't recognize anyone on the porch, but I didn't really expect to recognize anyone anyway--kind of like when you go to a party with a friend. So, as we walked up the steps, I nodded to them and said hello, but they just kind of gave me a really annoyed look--kind of like when you go to a party with a friend... and you try too hard. Come to find out, there were two funerals going on, and I was trying to speak to people that actually weren't in my family (which at funerals, is poor form).
But once someone directed me to the sign in the lobby, I had things a little more under control. I walked into a long chapel, and everyone seemed to be gather toward the front. I inspected the front of the room, but I didn't see a casket. Luckily, they had decided to forego that part of the funeral process, and even though I was well aware that you couldn't catch death, the 8-year-old inside of me was a little bit relieved. But in its place was something terrifying in a completely different way--family that I hadn't seen in years. I was out of practice when it came to this kind of thing. I barely know what to tell my friends when they lose a family member, but it's so much harder when it's your own family. I tried to survey the room, but I couldn't place any of the faces with names, so I just kept walking forward until I reached the cork board at the front of the room.
There were pictures of Stanley and his entire family, made up of people that I may or may not have met throughout the years. I followed the pictures from the bottom to the top until something else caught my eye--a giant flatscreen TV posted up on the wall with a single candle burning. The background was totally black, and the only thing on the screen was a white candle with a single flame. I'm sure it's supposed to represent something, but for some reason, all I could think was, "I mean, could we have just not put like... a real candle or something in here? And who captured this looping video of this candle... like, how do you get that job?" I spun around and stepped on a tiny little old lady who said, "Hi there. I'm Herman's sister. You know Herman," I have no idea who Herman is. "You know there's nine of us, right? Six boys and three girls. Can you even imagine?" I still had no idea who Herman was, and for a second, I thought that she might have made the same mistake that I did earlier, except she didn't see the sign in the front directing her to the correct funeral parlor.
I didn't know what to do, so I told her that I would be right back, but when I turned around again, there was Roger Dale. I immediately felt startled, but I was also really excited because in my mind, I kept thinking, This is my chance at a friend! We shook hands, and he had a really strong handshake, and as much as I hated it, all I could think was, "This is the perfect place for him to kill me because they wouldn't even need to call an ambulance. They'd just embalm me and call it a day." I froze, and I didn't know what to say, and before I knew it, I had lost my opportunity. My mom called me over to say hello to my aunt Connie who made a grand entrance from the back of the parlor. I watched her hug my mom and dad and brother with big tears in her eyes, thanking them for coming. Then my mom said, "Connie, here's Justin." She immediately stopped crying and said, "You're grown." She pulled me in really tight, put her face against the side of my head, and then it happened. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but she just blew... blew her nose with all of her might, directly in my ear.
I pulled back with a flattened smile and touched her shoulder and said, "I'm going to head over here for a second." I felt like people were watching me, waiting to see how I would react to this whole situation. I sat down in a pew behind my mom and pulled a kleenex out of the box sitting in the pew. I shoved it in my ear and leaned forward, quietly whispering to my mom, "Aunt Connie may or may not have just blew her nose in my ear. So, that happened."
My mom couldn't stop laughing, so I had to take my family outside where we congregated with my aunt and uncle that I'm closest to. By the time I got outside to join them, my mom had already lit in on the story about Aunt Connie blowing her nose in my ear, and on the other side of the circle Was Roger Dale, whose much closer to Connie than I am. I wanted to dive on my mom and tell her to stop or to cut the story short, but it was too late. I was making no headway with Roger Dale, and if he didn't smell the fear on me earlier in the parlor, then he definitely smelled it on me now. I felt like I needed to chime in, so I said, "You know, I'm wasn't upset at Aunt Connie for blowing her nose in my ear. I was just... surprised, which I feel like is the logical response when someone blows their nose in your ear." Roger Dale stared at me with the blankest expression and said, "Yeah, that doesn't happen," and then walked away. I knew that the funeral wasn't about me, nor was it supposed to be, but I wanted to fight back. I wanted to explain how brave I was for enduring getting a snot rocket lodged in my ear. I wanted to tell everyone how I was a survivor. But my mom interrupted and said, "Can we smoke on this porch, or do we need to go somewhere?"
Standing off the porch waiting on everyone to finish up their cigarettes, I looked back on the porch, still unable to recognize if any of the people hanging outside were actually related to me. It's almost comical because at one point, every death felt like the world was ending--whether it was a person or a rabbit. And then somewhere along the way, I wasn't able to even tell the difference between who was part of my family's and who was part of someone else's.
I still miss Grace. She was a pretty cool rabbit, but in retrospect, sometimes I wonder if I might have accidentally killed her myself. As an 8 year old, I wasn't really great at feeding things, nor taking care of them. In reality, my parents probably should have gotten me a goldfish, or like... one of those crabs you can get from the beach that legitimately never comes out of its shell. But no matter how mortified I was by Grace's death or the lethal rabbit death disease that she carried, it wasn't so much that I actually, you know, tried taking care of her while she was alive. And maybe that's the whole point of why rabbits and dogs and cousins named Stanley die. Maybe it's about reminding you of what's still in front of you--what you could be taking care of. Or maybe it's just a solid reminder of how many germs you carry on your face. We may never know.

What Happens to Italy, Stays in Los Angeles

The night I got to Los Angeles, Italy stopped me and asked me for a cigarette. Not the country, the fashion designer.

***

Today, I hopped on a plane to LAX with a dream and a cardigan, and from there, that's pretty much where the similarities between Miley Cyrus' experience and mine stops. I was placed in a middle seat, which is not equipped for a man my size to sit in, and then I became best friends with a young man who sat beside me on the plane. He touched my leg a lot and since Prop 8 was overturned, I'm fairly certain that means that we're married, so that's exciting. After I got off the plane, my friend Kara asked about how the trip went, and I was so delirious from the time difference and the journey and being in the land of Jennifer Lawrence that all I could say was, "He looked like a young Frankie Muniz, and he smelled like dreams."

Los Angeles is the closest thing I've seen to Panem from The Hunger Games. It's full of tall buildings and the city is surrounded by mountains, which absolutely blows my mind because I somehow feel like mountains only belong to the East coast. In short, I'm actually in The Hunger Games. Beyond the skyscrapers and the mountains though, my favorite part of the city is the people. They dress oddly, yet professionally at the same time. Though I feel like at any moment I might have to fight someone to my death, at the same time, I feel like the people of L.A. would be sad that I died. They may be kind of crazy, but the plasticky, tanned people of L.A. stole my heart, and that's probably why when Italy asked me for a cigarette, I didn't think twice about stopping.
She was sitting outside of the only 7-11 I could find in the downtown area, and I was jonesing for a Coke so there was really no avoiding her. She was in a skirt, but that didn't stop her from sitting open legged, with no inhibitions about showing off her lady business to the world. I'm not saying I endorse that kind of behavior, but I do have a certain amount of respect for someone when they say, "You might be able to see my bits and pieces, but that doesn't define me as a person." Anyway, Italy stopped me as I was walking down the sidewalk and said, "Baby, do you have a cigarette?" Anyone who calls me baby, particularly women in the 35-60 age range, automatically get whatever they want from me. I gave her a cigarette, and she said that I looked Irish, which is a nice way of saying, I'm sorry you were born without pigment.
After I spoke back to her, she asked where I was from and what I did, and it was on. I told her that I was in town for an event and that I helped plan it, and that's when she told me about her big plan--or rather, her big comeback. Some background: Italy was once one of the biggest fashion designers in the world. She told me to look her up, but unfortunately when you Google "Italy fashion designer," the results are not very narrowed. Unfortunately, a while back, Italy's luck had changed. At this point in the conversation, I had moved from standing in front of her to leaning against the brick wall beside her to eventually taking a seat next to her on the pavement outside of 7-11. As she was lighting up the second cigarette I gave her, she said, "You want to listen to my story because if you walk away, you'll see me on TV in a year and say to yourself, Goddamn, that bitch knew what she was talking about." Little did she know, I had no intention of walking away. Like that little girl in the AT&T commercials, I wanted more. I wanted more. I want it now.
She told me about her downfall: one night, a gang came to her house and pulled her out of it. They beat her and beat her and then told her she could never go back into her house. So, naturally, when a gang tells you what to do, you do it. She didn't go back into her house. With strict orders from the game, Italy didn't get any of her stuff so she took to the streets. When she returned to check on her house, it had been burned down. With no other leads, she assumed it was the gang. I guess I would have thought it was the gang, too, but I also probably would not have left my house to begin with. That's neither here nor there. Since the initial gang attack, Italy's house was burned down nine more times. Again, I'm unsure how your house gets burned down an additional nine times, but it did.
I pulled out my phone to start taking notes because there was a lot of information being thrown my way, and I was too deep in the game at this point to walk away. Occasionally, Italy would reach into her bag which was full of files and papers, most of the time not pulling anything out... just doing collateral to make sure everything was there, I guess. Except one time she did completely divert away from the story and told me how she was going to sue the subway system for emotional damages, which actually makes a lot of sense. If she's successful, I am probably going to sue my local metro system for emotional damages as well.
I truly felt sympathy for Italy because I hate the idea of anyone getting beaten up for no reason. I hated that she had it all and it was taken away from her so quickly. I hated that her sister lives with Bon Jovi now (oh, I didn't mention that before? Yeah, apparently that's a thing, too) and that she's making no moves to bring Italy  into her Livin on a Prayer life. I hated it all.
But that's when the story took a turn. I'm sitting there on pins and needles (considering that it was the streets of Downtown LA, I might have actually been sitting on a needle. God only knows), waiting for what happens next when Italy says, verbatim, "But it wasn't the gang who burned my house down 9 times. You see, there's a mysterious incinerator under my house, and every couple of months, it sets itself on fire and burns the house down again." Classic pit-of-Hell-plot-device. I was eating it up. It took me back to my preteen days of watching the short-lived soap opera Passions on NBC, when Charity was sent to the fires of Hell conveniently located in someone's basement. At that point, I think Italy realized that she had told me enough, and that I was pretty much hooked, so she launched into her plan.
She asked me if I would help her promote her comeback (duh) where she would walk from LA to Virginia (what?!) where her mother lives, and she wanted to market it in the same style that Oprah publicized her and Gayle's road trip across America (signed, sealed, delivered). All that she wanted was someone to tell her story on Twitter because that's how everyone communicates these days. I really don't know exactly what she needed my help with because it sounded like she had everything planned out. I wanted on board though because by the time the conversation was over, I wondered for a moment myself if this woman might actually end up on television. Because I lack any professional credentials, I gave her my email and Twitter handle (as if she has access to the Internet). I wished her the best, and I almost shook her hand, but I remembered that at one point mid-conversation that she reached up inside of her skirt... and I don't play that game.
It's been almost two weeks now, and I haven't heard from Italy. I imagine she's still out there, hustlin' the streets looking for people to listen to her story whilst stifling her rage toward Bon Jovi. She might be back at her house, if it's burned itself down again that is. Wherever she is, a piece of her is lingering with me, and one day when I turn on the news and see that large woman in her puffy jacket and mini skirt on the television, I can say that I knew Italy back when: in that awkward interim between her first rise to stardom and her second.

Riding in Cars with Boys

My mom always told me to never get into the car with strangers, but honestly, the older I've gotten, I've always had a habit of bending the rules that my mom set forth for me way back when. I have a love for strangers, especially weird ones. Luckily I never had too much of an affinity for candy, otherwise I would have ended up in the wrong Astrovan a long time ago, and then I would have ended up being the Elizabeth Smart of the East Tennessee community. Regardless, I've managed to make it twenty-two years based on the kindness of strangers, and it's honestly a mystery as to how I have managed to not be murdered.
I guess it probably dials back to the fact that I love people, no matter who they are because everyone has an interesting story to tell. I've never really cared what someone looked like or how dangerous they looked... I always cared more about how they got there and if they were willing to tell me about it. I don't have many regrets in life, but one of the moments that stands out to me most distinctly was during my sophomore year of college. My parents had asked me to meet them at a car dealership because my mom was getting a new car (little did I know, we were actually trading in my clunker Jeep [may he rest in peace] for a car for me). As I turned off the interstate, there was an old man with a Duck Dynasty type beard walking down the road with his thumb out. I was immediately stopped at a red light because the Knoxville infrastructure somehow legitimized putting a stoplight on the off ramp from I-40 to Emory Road. Even from a distance, we locked eyes for just a moment. I smiled and nodded at him, and he returned the favor. I'm sure most people would have summed it up as just another vagrant looking for money or a free ride, but I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to go back and pick him up. From then on out, I had a stronger itch than ever to collect strangers on the road and put them in my car, kind of like a collection of hitchhikers.
So, after a couple years of waiting, I got my opportunity. The evening after my friend Dixie took me on one of the most painful hikes I've ever been on, we were completely exhausted on the way back toward campus. As we were navigating the Smoky Mountains tourist traffic, we came upon a young man with a giant pack on his back loaded down with all sorts of goodies hanging off of it. I looked at Dixie and asked if we go pick him up, as if he were some kind of stray kitten lost on the side of the road. Either way, I saw it as an opportunity because first and foremost, we had an opportunity to help another human being... and on the off chance that he was a crazed lunatic, I finally had an opportunity to test my self-protective skills with the metal pipe I carry in my car. We took about a mile deliberating the options before I made the executive decision to go pick him up.
He told us about hiking the Appalachian Trail and how his trail name was Leaf, as his walking stick was stabbing me in the neck from the backseat.  He was asking us questions about our lives, but not in the simple "everybody talks like this" kind of way, but more like if Ralph Waldo Emerson hopped in your backseat after a couple weeks alone in the woods. We ended up letting Leaf out of the car about two thirds a mile down the road, so we weren't actually that helpful at all in getting him where he was going. I had (kind of) helped a hitch hiker though, and I didn't get stabbed, so I considered an overarching victory.
Since then, I hadn't found myself in a vehicle with someone I didn't know up until just recently. DC is a bustling place where no one ever really knows each other because people move in and out so quickly that by the time you've introduced yourself, they're closing the door on a UHaul. But this week at work, I was asked to take a taxi from our office across town to deliver some materials to a client. I tried not to show my nervousness, but I didn't have any knowledge as to how you make this work. I mean, I had a couple of movie references, but most of the time, nothing in real life is like the movies. My plan of action was to go to the edge of the street and hold out my hand, but if they didn't seem to be slowing down, I would leap onto the hood until they came to a red light, then hop off and quickly dive in the back door. Luckily, the first one I saw stopped.
The ride was fantastic: a nice greeting once I got in, simple address request, light classical music on the way there. I was exhausted this week, so I took the twenty minute ride to collect my thoughts and just reflect on the week. My mind hasn't stopped lately, as I've been trying to get a handle on all of my 20-something thoughts. I've been thinking about how I want to approach my career and finals, and how being single during Christmastime is a total buzzkill. I wondered if I'd ever get married, and then I wondered what shade of leather I would make all the furniture in my "man room," when I was a fifty year old bachelor. It was so great that I was even looking forward to the ride back. But when I got in the taxi on the way back, there was no classical music. I didn't have time to begin my in depth life-changing contemplations/start planning the interior decorating for my bachelor pad because the taxi driver was too busy telling me how to hail a taxi properly. Apparently what I did wasn't hailing a taxi, as much as it was waving at cars going by, as if I knew the driver or if it was a parade. I knew it was going to be a very long taxi ride back.

About two minutes into the drive, he asked me if I smoked. Nervous, I answered, Yeah, I'm sorry because, you know, I'm obligated to apologize for each of my life decisions. He told me, Oh, it's fine. It's your body and your decision... at first, I thought that was it, which would have been a refreshing turn of events, but he followed up with, you know that smoking will kill you, right? which was a hard sentence to comprehend through his Dominican accent. It makes you die a slow painful death. That's why you've coughed so much since you've gotten in. It's already happening. I don't have any addictions in the world, except for women. I'm 58 years old, and I sleep with too many women. It wouldn't be a problem if I weren't married. Cue his extremely loud laughter and my nervous hiccups in the back. It all made sense to me: my mom didn't warn against me riding in the car with strangers because it was dangerous... she warned against it because people are really friggin' weird and kind of annoying sometimes. He went on to ask me if I had a girlfriend, and then told me that if I didn't get on it soon, I was going to be 50 looking around... wondering why I was still alone. I took his advice pretty hard until I reminded myself that he's married and sleeps around with all kinds of people. Guessing that I had become uncomfortable, due to my nervous texting and constant shifting closer to the door, he told me that he would leave me alone.
I felt bad because as weird as the conversation was, I felt like my body language was saying, Hey Dominican cab driver. I don't like your or your extramarital affairs. Stop talking, when it reality, all I was trying to say was, Hey Dominican cab driver, stop talking. After about three minutes of silence, he chimed in with, I can make excellent empanadas. There was no segue or any previous indicator that we had talked about empanadas, but because I was afraid I had already hurt his feelings, I took the bait. He went on to tell me about how he tried to contact Starbucks' corporate office to market his empanadas, but they didn't want his recipe. Eventually, they would pay. He was going to open up his own empanada business, and if I was interested, I could join him. He fries them instead of baking them. I think the latter half of the conversation was in Spanish because I couldn't understand what he was saying anymore. Eventually, things got quiet again.
At this point, we had hit dead stop traffic, and I was paying to sit in a cab and listen to him talk about empanadas. After about two minutes, he told me that people that smoke have to carry tanks of oxygen around and wear masks. As the meter kept rolling, I knew I had to make a quick getaway. This man had painted my future as a 50 year old, empanada-businessman, who was lonely but actually died around 34 from smoking. I asked, Hey, I can get off here, if that's cool. He said, your destination is still five blocks away. Desperately trying to escape the car, I said, Oh, that's fine. I like to walk, and I can get Starbucks on my way back to the office. Shit. He hates Starbucks, Justin. I quickly handed him the money and leapt out of the backseat in the same way that I thought I would have to leap in.
In the end, maybe it isn't such a good idea to ride around with strangers. I know that one day, I'll tell my children about the perils of riding in cars with strangers, but I won't scare them out of it with ambiguous stories of men in van with candy and ill-intentions. I'll tell them about how sometimes strangers do psychedelic drugs and talk over your head in that annoying, transcendental way. I'll tell them about how sometimes they criticize your way of life and then implore about why you don't have a sex life. And most of all, I'll take them to Starbucks to have that conversation, and we will most certainly not be ordering empanadas.

Fire in the Hole

Today, as I returned from my lunch break, I quickly put out my cigarette and throw it in the trash, but I paused... life experience does that to you. Instead, I brushed the ashes against the pavement until the residual tobacco started to fall out. I didn't stop until I made it all the way down to the filter. Then, after inspecting the cigarette for anything resembling a dying ember, I brushed it against my shoe once more, threw it in the trash can and stared at it for thirty seconds.
Since I started smoking my sophomore year of college, people have given me a slew of reasons why I should stop. There's a risk of cancer and it turns your teeth and fingernails yellow. You always go around smelling like smoke and nobody wants to kiss an ashtray. Little do people know that the reason that I smoke is to deal with the moments when they preach to me about how bad smoking is... and if I stopped smoking, they would preach to me about something else, and then I would take my abandoned lighter and set them on fire because the lack of nicotine in my system would cause me to lash out and act irrationally, but I suppose that the idea of catching something on fire is not a joke I should be making... not this close to the disaster.
Yesterday was, simply put, a shit show. I was late to work because I got stuck in the worst traffic I've seen since I watched a Bristol NASCAR race, and then when I finally got to the metro, I got on the wrong train a grand total of three times. I'm not sure how someone boards the wrong train three times, but let me tell you, it's not an easy feat. You seriously have to try and be that much of a metro area failure. Finally, after I rode the train back to my starting location, I got the hang of the system and made it to work. I was assigned work that I completely butchered and had to redo from scratch, so as the day went on, my annoyance with myself and those around me only continued to increase. Because I had carpooled into work, I was supposed to meet up with my roommate Ben so that he would pick me up at the Clarendon metro.
I had beaten him to our predetermined location, and after the intense struggle that I had with the traffic and the trains and the public relations, I decided that I deserved a cigarette. I lit up, and in about six minutes, the cigarette was gone. I casually brushed off the embers and tossed it into the trashcan. A bus had pulled up and let off people at the corner I was standing at, and a man got off and looked at me and said, "Hey." Naturally, I responded back, but as he walked away, he kept glancing back at me... or at least, around me. About thirty seconds later, I looked back, and there it was... the trash can was smoking.

Being the logical, level-headed person I am, I started blowing on the smoke, like a birthday candle or a stray eyelash on your hand. With the extra wind power, the smoke caught ahold of some paper and the trash can was literally on fire. The next step I took is one that seemed like the natural choice in my mind: I spit on it, because I obviously can generate enough saliva to put out a trash fire. As the fire continues to grow larger and larger, actual logic began to sit in, and I came to the conclusion that if I continued to put my head inside of this burning trash can, I was going to pass out and fall in, which would not only kill me, but essentially provide more material for the trash can to burn. I turned to the small Asian woman sitting at the bus stop beside the trash can and calmly explained the situation by saying, Oh crap. Oh crap. It's on fire. I caught the trash can on fire. Her response was to not say anything, grab her belongings, and walk away.
By this time, the smoke and fire was entertaining enough to start drawing in a crowd. I've never really understood what it is about disaster that attracts people to come in closer to it, but then again, I guess I'm not really allowed to talk, considering that my solution to extinguishing a fire consisted of spitting on it. I ran across the street into a restaurant and interrupted a man at the front desk, I'm really sorry. I don't mean to bother you, but I just set a trash can on fire. Can I get some water? And because apparently no one was on their A game, he said, What? What did you do? I thought that my explanation was pretty crystal clear. I caught a trash can on fire, and I needed water to put it out. There really was no time to explain it any further, I just need some water. Now. He came back with a glass, and I shot back across the streets in slacks and a dress shirt, strategically dousing the fire with an unusually large glass of water.
In a really strange turn of events, no one actually saw me smoke or throw the cigarette into the trash can, including the officer sitting across the street who had been there since I lit the cigarette in the first place. People were coming up to me and saying things like, Way to be thinking on your feet! and Thank you for being on top of it today! but my personal favorite was Wow, way to go. Did someone throw a lit cigarette into the trash can? to which I responded, Yeah, I think so. People are so stupid. The officer who had been sitting in his car the entire time, leaned out the window and said, Hey, you. Shit, I was busted. Was that trash can on fire? I responded, yes sir. Did you get it put out? I responded, yes sir. Thank you for being a good citizen. You're a good man. So, somehow I managed to be the village hero for the day by putting out a fire... that I started.
And I guess, in the grand scheme of things, I really am scared of cancer, and even more scared of smelling like smoke or having yellow teeth, but the one thing that people have never told me about smoking is that cigarettes can catch things on fire. I go back to all the safety videos that we were made to watch as children (when smoking was allowed in restaurants... what?!), and I remember seeing videos about old women who would smoke in bed and then end up catching themselves and everything else on fire. If you're an advocate of people stopping smoking, that's what I encourage you to tell people about. The cancer thing, the appearance thing, the wrinkles thing... that horse is dead, and not from second hand smoke inhalation. Start going around and telling people that if they don't stop smoking they're going to catch some shit on fire. As I was having a cigarette today, I crossed my eyes and looked down at the end of the butt and saw the embers glowing bright orange. All I could think about is that I could be next... yesterday was the trash can, but with one wrong move, tomorrow... I could go up in flames.