Books are a uniquely portable magic. ~ Stephen King

Monday, May 10, 2010

I'm Holding 'Em For a Friend

Memoir Monday

It happened to Greg Brady. It happened to Theo Huxtable. And it happened to me. Yep. Greg, Theo and I were all found to be in possession of smoking materials that weren't ours. Theo had a joint. Greg and I had cigarettes. All three of us claimed to be holding them for a friend. Not one of us was believed.

I'm not saying I never tried it. Of course I did. But I just never developed the lungs for it. I liked the way I looked with a lit cigarette in my hand, but I took no pleasure at all in inhaling smoke. It's very hard to look sophisticated when one is hawking up a lung. So. So I tried a few times, but it never really took. There were way too many other vices that I actually enjoyed for me to bother trying to train my body to try to accept something it wanted to reject. Nope. I was never a cigarette smoker.

Of course I had friends that were.

And of course I always thought they looked cooler than I did. They probably did.

Once my mom asked me for something - I don't recall what - and I said, "It's in my purse, go ahead and get it." When she opened my purse, there it was. A nice fresh pack of smokes. My mother's face blanched. The hand that was holding my purse started to shake. She couldn't speak right away. When she DID find her voice, she spoke very slowly - clearly trying to maintain her control.

"What. Are. THESE?" she asked, holding the offending pack above her head like a war trophy.

"Oh!" I gasped, "I forgot those were in there!" In retrospect, that was possibly not the sharpest retort.

"Oh. You forGOT they were IN there. THAT'S all you have to say for yourself?"

"No! Oh! You think they're mine?"

She gave me that patented 'I didn't just fall off the turnip truck' stare.

"Oh, man! No! They're totally not! I'm holding them for a friend!"

"Oh. You're holding them for a friend. What friend, may I ask?" she asked, picking up the phone with her free hand while still brandishing the smokes in her other. Shit. Another mother was about to be called in.

"You don't know him." It was true. I was holding them for a very cute boy who I'd just met. My mother would've found him to be way too old for me. My mother would've NEVER approved. Throw in the fact that he was a smoker and... oh, man, I really wanted to see this cute boy again. I loved that he had asked me to hold his cigarettes, because I figured that guaranteed at least one more meeting.

I took the fall.

"I'm sorry, Mom. They're mine. I just wanted to see what it was like. I tried it and I hated it. I really did forget they were there - do you think I would've told you to open my purse if I remembered?" There was a good lot of truth there and one not very well thought out lie.

She thanked me for my honesty. She threw the cigarettes away. And she grounded me for a week.

Good bye, cute, bad boy.

Good bye full week of freedom. In the summer.

It didn't work out that badly for Greg and Theo. Of course, they had better writers.

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