Going from Connolly on the Luas this morning, I saw in one human being all that is wrong with the world.He'd been waiting outside puffing on his fag like the world was about to end. The bells on the Luas tram began to sound and the lights blinking, telling us it was about to go. Mr Smoker cast aside his butt and dove in just as the doors were closing. His plaid jacket only just avoided being caught.
It turned out he knew another guy standing inside and began to talk. This is where reality became too harsh: the first 2--3 sentences were accented by wafts of smoke streaming out of his mouth. It easily went for a full minute of talking and exhaling. It reminded me of the foggy breath you get in the winter when it's brutally cold and if you're a kid, or with a kid, or feel like being a kid, you deliberately blow air out of your lungs just for the novelty of seeing it take form in front of you.
The aroma of his habit was omni-present throughout the tram, even when the doors opened and closed at each stop on the way to where I needed to get off. Mr Smoker and his friend were having a loud discussion about some topic I've since blocked from my memory. When I described it to a friend, they said it sounded just like like Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie playing "the shouting business men", two guys only a few inches apart but still using that trademark call for attention.
Just as we're slowing down, Mr Smoker cemented himself in my long-term memory. He reached down and unzipped his pants, reached inside to adjust---his underwear, I'm sure, then zipped them back up again. All while shouting with his travel-mate. By now the smoke had stopped coming out of his mouth.
Therapy, that's all that could help...
Eeuuuuugh gross. The smoking and the underwear fiddling.
ReplyDeleteWho is the therapy for? You or him?
Ok I dont condone getting onto any mode of transport with a full gob of smoke, to bring with you, and that is coming from a smoker.
ReplyDeleteAs for the fiddling sometimes us weel endowed have problems with getting a bit tangled. But unzipping yourself on public transport to do so is unacceptable. Maybe we should start a fund for the weird and disgusting things we all seem to be encountering on a daily basis, to pay for the therapy
That is such a guy thing...if a woman was falling out of her top, she'd at least turn to a wall or something, keep some sort of modesty. But nooooo, guys just reach down and *do*. I once was about to give my order to a waiter, when he reached down and adjusted. My girlfriends and I got up to leave...now that we know where his hands had been!!
ReplyDeleteI can think of worse things too.
ReplyDeleteYou think he would have learned from the cautionary tale that is the current Nicorette ad.
ReplyDelete