Slow burn
As I was waiting to check out some DVDs at the circulation desk of my local library this evening, I noticed something funny.
“Do you smell smoke?” the librarian asked me, furrowing his brow.
I nodded. The librarian began quickly glancing around, trying to determine the source of the odor. At first I thought it was just the scent of someone smoking a cigarette just outside the library’s front door. As another library patron left, I realized where the smell was coming from.
“There’s someone smoking in the foyer, between the two sets of glass doors,” I said. At that point, another librarian had already stepped into the tiny, glassed-in foyer to ask that the smoker take the cigarette outside.
“I’m sorry, you can’t smoke here,” the second librarian said. The smoker took a long drag, and looked down at the librarian.
“I can’t smoke out there,” the smoker replied, cocking his head out toward the sidewalk while blowing out a gray cloud around his head. He stood there, continuing to puff away.
Everyone looked at each other for a moment. As my librarian stepped out from behind the circulation desk, and the security guard began to walk towards the foyer, the smoker said he would leave. He continued to smoke for a while longer before stepping outside and walking down the sidewalk, cigarette extinguished.
Because everybody knows that the whole point of a public library is to abuse things like you never would in your own home, or even out on the sidewalk, right?
