Now That I Have My Mouth Open... What Do I Do With My Foot?

Another day has come and gone and still I remain standing.  I received some work back and I feel slightly more confident and slightly more nervous.  I had an Ancient Greek quiz today that I do NOT feel confident about… we’ll see how that goes…  I also have my first “real” essay due in Modern Philosophy next Tuesday.  My stomach knots up whenever I think about it.

On another note, Meme and Papa are coming this weekend to visit!  It was a surprise to me last night when they called asking if this upcoming weekend would be a good time to come, but now that it is all settled, I’m very excited.  It’ll be a very fun weekend.  I certainly love my grandparents.  (And they obviously love me to drive 702 miles!)

To those of you who replied to yesterday’s blog about what should my response be to Pontiac…  I wrote the Pastor back.  I thanked him for his letter and told him about my goal to visit all 23 churches in my area, but I did tell him how Pontiac captured my heart and that I would be back sooner than I had originally anticipated.  I went on to say that I would probably be back to visit my new friends in Pontiac in early October.  I thought it was a nice compromise that satisfied both sides fighting within me.

So today’s story of the day starts with an observation.  There is more cigarette smoking here.  I do not know if it is Illinois based, or simply college based; my guess is that it is college related as for the first time I am around people who can all legally buy tobacco.  However, every time I see one of my peers puffing away, it makes me a little sad.  It is little pieces of life that they are inhaling and exhaling mixed with the toxic chemicals, nicotine, and other various things in the drag off of a cigarette. 

Anyhow, I was walking to my car to investigate a hotel Meme had found on the internet when my friend was sitting with two girls who were taking a smoke break.  He called out, “It doesn’t rub off, come over for a minute!”

So I walked over, and we talked for a minute.  We actually discussed, kinda lightly, smoking as a habit and how that contrasted with “social smoking”.  My friend believed that I thought negatively on smoking and he seemed to want my opinion on what I thought about smoking.  (I used the word “seemed” because I cannot remember if he specifically asked me or if it was intended for it to be said, but I would not have said the following without an invitation of some sort.)

“Well, I don’t think badly of smokers, I just think smoking is plebian.”  My friend, who was an extremely rare smoker it came to be known, just looked at me and said, “Ouch!” 

I wrote off this experience as yet another example of when opinions are best kept to ourselves and that what we think other people want (or what they think they want, as well) is often the exact opposite of what they wanted you to say.  Oh well, for better or worse, I have said far worse things.