Another Place, Another Time, Another Me

 

I’m at a high school basketball game. Not at my high school, though. The gym is full, the lobby buzzing at halftime. I’m standing outside the girls’ bathroom, waiting for my friend, when a fan from the other team sticks a lighted cigarette in my hand. “Hold this for me. I’ll be right back.” And she walks into the bathroom.

I stand there, doing as she says, feeling like an idiot. I should just drop the damn thing to the ground, stomp it out, and walk away. 

That girl can’t be mad at me personally. And even if she is mad enough to spread ugly rumors, she doesn't know my name and couldn’t pick me out from the multitude of other girls with long, straight hair, waiting on the green flecked linoleum flooring, leaning against the ash-green-painted cinderblock walls.

But my friend still hasn’t resurfaced yet, so there I wait, the grey wisps curling from the lit tip that’s slightly warming my fingers and starting to make me the least bit nauseous. And there I stand, expecting some person I know to walk up and ask when I started smoking. 

Of course, I didn’t. I’m the one who nagged my mom to stop until she finally quit last year. Who wants their mother to die from a potentially avoidable disease?

The voices grow louder to rise above the Fight Song playing from just inside the banks of steel doors that lead into the gym. It’s the signal that halftime is almost over. People start filing inside. Where’s my friend? Where’s Cigarette Girl?

I’m just about to drop that cigarette when someone—that girl—grabs it from my hand without a thanks. She and her friends are laughing as they head toward the doors on the opposite wall, leading outside where they can, undoubtedly, finish their cigarettes in the sub-freezing night. There’s no smoking inside the gym, so the signs say.

Finally, my friend comes out with some seemingly plausible explanation for her delay, the band and the cheers drowning out half her words. Doesn’t matter. We go back and join our other friends on the wooden bleachers, our favorite first hangout on Friday nights that winter.

Inside that stuffy gym with the game heating up, it's easy to ignore the smell of athletic sweat. Even easier to forget it after our team wins. 

But why do I feel like I lost a little something? If only I’d stomped out that cigarette.

Jody Feldman, who is so glad that the smoking part of this scene is history, would definitely have reacted differently to that girl today. So that would have changed. What wouldn't? She'd still be going to as many football and basketball games as she could with her friends.