Cigarette?

I was sitting in a café and out of the window I saw three high school girls, walking past. In the eight seconds or so it took them to pass out of my view I noticed the girl closest to the street offer a three quarters smoked cigarette to the other two. Both declined the proffered gift. (I use the term gift very loosely)

Now appearances can be deceiving but it did look as if all three girls had been smoking the cigarette before they entered the part of the street where the café was. Otherwise why was the cigarette being offered? Who smokes most of a cigarette and then decides to offer it to companions?

Immediately I started to ask myself all sorts of questions. Like what sort of a pupil walks down the street in uniform smoking? What were they thinking? Why would any young person take up smoking when testimonies abound about how hard it is to stop and there is a regular bombardment of information as to how bad smoking is for you? Don’t they care how pathetic they looked? What were they hoping to achieve? What is the principal of the school’s phone number? Did the two girls refuse the cigarette because they saw me staring at them in stupendous wonder? Can’t young people think of a better way to rebel than smoking?

Were the girls participating in a social experiment to see what kind of reaction they would get to smoking in a public place? Where were the hidden television camera filming the response? Did they catch my reaction? Will a reporter come banging on my door demanding to know why I did not do something about the girls smoking? Is my chai latte gone already?

All good questions. And I do not know any of the answers except the principal's number is in the phone book and my chai latte which was warm and contained one third froth had indeed been quaffed. I do not know why it is so hard to get a hot chai latte that takes longer than two minutes to drink.