In the summer of 1982 I was 17 and had just finished my junior year of high school, the year in which I began my illustrious career as a juvenile delinquent. I failed two of my classes for the year and had to go to summer school to make them up. If you’ve never had to go to summer school, let me tell you, it bites. The only good part about it was that I could drive there: I was a newly-licensed driver and had inherited from my mom a red 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, which is a really great car to have as your first set of wheels. I loved that Bug, man. I could cruise for a week on two dollars worth of gas (of course, it was regular leaded gas and cost about 49 cents a gallon, but still), and park it anywhere, although the manual steering meant that parallel parking was a test of upper-body strength. I could even push it by myself if I had to, and sometimes I did. The dashboard had exactly two buttons on it, one for the lights and one for the wipers. It had an AM-only radio and a top speed of about 50 miles per hour. My favorite thing was the little triangular window in front of the regular window, which you could aim right at your face when cruising on a hot day. Like, for instance, on your way to summer school.
Awesomeness in vehicular form.
My first class of the day was English (yes, I’d failed English), and it was pretty much filled with other delinquents. The teacher had a “this is summer school, you don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, let’s just get through this with a minimum of effort” kind of attitude, so it wasn’t too terrible. I constructed all of my vocabulary-test sentences using the names of bands or songs (I remember that one of the words was credence, which I turned into a sentence about Creedence Clearwater Revival, which for some reason impressed the teacher), and I wrote a book report on No One Here Gets Out Alive.
My second class was Analysis & Trigonometry. There were only four other students, and they were all taking it as an advanced course, to get a jump on their next year. In other words, they were there--in summer school--voluntarily. Like, on purpose. The part of me that remains an eternal adolescent still cannot wrap her head around that. So there I was, the sole delinquent in a class of math nerds who actually wanted to learn. The class was like, two and a half hours long, so the teacher would periodically give us ten-minute breaks, before which he’d always say, “We’re gonna take a break, so go outside, smoke a cigarette, whatever.” It struck me as odd, because there was no way those goody two-shoes mathies smoked. I, however, did.
I’d taken up the habit the previous summer, when I was visiting my grandparents in upstateNew York
My second class was Analysis & Trigonometry. There were only four other students, and they were all taking it as an advanced course, to get a jump on their next year. In other words, they were there--in summer school--voluntarily. Like, on purpose. The part of me that remains an eternal adolescent still cannot wrap her head around that. So there I was, the sole delinquent in a class of math nerds who actually wanted to learn. The class was like, two and a half hours long, so the teacher would periodically give us ten-minute breaks, before which he’d always say, “We’re gonna take a break, so go outside, smoke a cigarette, whatever.” It struck me as odd, because there was no way those goody two-shoes mathies smoked. I, however, did.
I’d taken up the habit the previous summer, when I was visiting my grandparents in upstate
I’ve always said there’s only one reason people start smoking, namely to be cool, although I’m sure that’s not really the only reason. For instance, there are places, cultures, or times when smoking is simply de rigueur, like the early-’60s advertising world of Mad Men. In my case, however, I started smoking because I desperately wanted to shed my image as a bookish nerd. I wanted to be cool. So I kept smoking when I got back home that summer, even though it’s not an easy habit to get in the swing of. Seriously, you have to really want to smoke, because it is so gnarly at first. But I really wanted to.
Coolness didn’t come from simply being a smoker, though. There’s a process involved in smoking, and every part of that process contributed to the amount of coolness conferred upon you. None of it was ever made express, of course. You just had to figure it out as you went along. Obviously, the brand of cigarettes you smoked was first on the list, but that wasn’t too difficult to suss out: pretty much everybody I knew smoked Marlboros. Marlboro Lights were also acceptable, but definitely carried fewer cool points. So I started smoking Marlboros, which was nice because my dad also smoked them, and I could steal a couple from him when I ran out. I started out buying the flip-top boxes because that’s what my dad bought (and I have to point out that a pack of cigarettes cost 85 cents at the time. Eighty-five cents! Change for your dollar! It seems crazy now that something that brings so much pleasure could cost so little), but quickly learned that soft packs were cooler. To open the pack in the coolest way, you would pull the red tab around and take off the top part of the cellophane, but leave the rest of the cellophane on so you could stick a book of matches in there. The top of the pack was foil with a band over the middle, and you’d unfold one side of the foil and then tear it off, leaving a hole big enough for maybe four cigarettes. To get one out, you’d put your index finger over most of the hole and do a quick flick of the wrist that, if performed correctly, caused a single cigarette to slide about halfway out. You’d then put the end of the cigarette in your mouth and smoothly pull the pack away.
Lighting a cigarette coolly was a bit more complex. Your choices for lighting were, in ascending order of coolness, cardboard matches, disposable lighters, wooden matches, and refillable metal lighters. There were exceptions, though—if, for instance, you were one of those people who could light a cardboard match not by plucking it from the book and using three or more fingers to hold and strike it, but by leaving it attached and folding it over so that the match head met the striking surface, then flicking it with just your thumb to light it, you were awarded substantial cool points. (I was not one of those people.)
Once the cigarette was lit--well, then things got really complicated. The different ways of holding a cigarette, putting it in your mouth, inhaling and exhaling, flicking the ashes, etc., all of which probably seem to a non-smoker fairly straightforward, are in fact so byzantine that to enumerate them and their attendant coolness points here is a greater task than I’ve set out to accomplish. Let’s move on to what’s actually relevant to this post, which is putting the cigarette out. Again, to the uninitiated it probably seems pretty simple: stub out the butt and walk away. And indeed, you could do that. But where do you stub it out? In an ashtray? Sure, if there’s one around, but if not, where? On the ground? Against a wall? On the bottom of your shoe? In your hand? I’m kidding on that last one, nobody does that in real life. But all of the other ones are viable options, and there are many others, all with varying degrees of coolness.
Do you see how overwhelming all of this can be? Most of the time, I went with the “throw it on the ground and crush it with your shoe” tactic. A classic, to be sure, and nothing to be frowned upon in those days when no one cared about the planet except Woodsy the Owl and the Crying Indian--but nothing special, either. I wanted something better. Something cooler. I wanted to execute The Flick. And I don’t mean just any flick, either. Anybody can do a basic flick: rest the butt on the pad of your thumb and hold it in place with the nail of your middle finger, then flick your finger forward and send the butt arcing through space. Easy, right? But with The Flick, there’s no arc, and that’s the key: The Flick sends your smoldering remnant of tobacco-y goodness rocketing into the Earth with the speed and truth of an arrow from the bow of a fucking Amazon, to explode in a shower of orange sparks. It is, in a word, cool.
Making it even cooler was the fact that the people I knew who regularly discarded their butts using The Flick executed the maneuver in a totally casual manner. They barely seemed to impart any energy into their Flicks, yet those tiny cylinders were launched as if they’d been Flicked by the Incredible Hulk. And they’d always start to turn away even as they were Flicking, as though they’d become so accustomed to successful Flickage that it wasn’t a big deal. “What’s that, a cigarette smashing into the pavement at 90 miles an hour and creating a mini Fourth of July display? Like I haven’t seen that a million times. Have they refilled the vending machine with Ho-Hos yet?”
A variant of The Flick was The Puddle Flick. A Puddle Flick was executed just like a regular Flick, but was even more impressive in that the Flicker had to hit a clear target, namely, a puddle or other nearby collection of water. Properly done, The Puddle Flick instantly extinguished your butt with a satisfying fssst, and carried the bonus of insulating you from the opprobrium of indignant hippies concerned by a burning stub left on the ground: “Hey man, you could totally set the grass on fire, man.” It was my burning--pun totally intended--desire to one day execute a perfect Puddle Flick. I practiced often, but could never quite get it down. I think I focused too much on imparting enough force to achieve the necessary velocity, and not enough on finger mechanics, to the detriment of the entire operation. Typically it seemed that most of the force was directed at my thumb. Either that or it was directed too far to one side of the butt, which just sent it spinning miserably to the ground a few inches from my feet.
OK, so here’s the actual memory I was talking about before this enormous digression: I was at summer school, in Analysis class, and the teacher called a break. The math nerds all stayed inside to like, do extra credit or something. I went out to cop a smoke. When I got outside, there was a dude with a boombox. I don’t know if he was listening to a tape or the radio, but I clearly remember that the song playing was “Mr. Crowley” by Ozzy Osbourne. There was also a chick sitting on the steps. They were both smoking, of course. I didn’t know either of them--something I forgot to mention back at the top is that my high school didn’t offer summer classes, so I was taking them at another school--but this chick was like, a perfect specimen of genus Newjerseyus, species burnoutus, subspecies metalheadus. She had the look that I totally coveted but could never hope to achieve: her dark hair was feathered, as was the norm, but like most burnout chicks, and in opposition to the general female populace, who styled and shellacked their ’dos to within a inch of their lives, the feathers hung lankly in her face. Her eyes were lined heavily in black, but the rest of her face was bare. She had the kind of full-lipped pout that always looked sexy when smoking. Purple feather earrings hung from her lobes. She was wearing a faded baseball jersey, white with periwinkle sleeves; soft, well-worn Levi’s with big holes in the knees; and black moccasin boots with fringe that, oh my god, I totally saw on sale at Nordstrom the other day! I can’t believe they’re back in style after all these years! Since she was sitting down I can’t be sure, but I’m willing to bet there was a bandanna, probably red, in her back pocket.
I sat on the other side of the stairs and smoked my cigarette. I probably exchanged burnout-style pleasantries with my compatriots, but I don’t actually remember if I did. What I remember is that when I was finished, I stood up and prepared to extinguish my cigarette butt. As I did so, I realized that there was a small puddle perhaps six or seven feet away from me. My mind started racing; I knew that this was a perfect opportunity to attempt a Puddle Flick. If I failed, I was subject to unspoken derision from Boombox Dude and Girl That I Very Much Wished I Could Be. But if I succeeded, here were two people who had never known me as that bookish nerd, and would forevermore recall me only as a totally cool person. I teed up the butt. Straining to appear as casual as possible, while secretly freaking out with every molecule in my body, I Flicked. As if loosed from the bow of Hippolyta herself, the tiny missile flew speedily and unerringly to its target. Fssst. A perfectly executed Puddle Flick. Tens all around, except from the Soviet judge, of course. So stunned was I by the sheer perfection I had achieved that I almost forgot to turn immediately and head back inside. But I did, and as I turned I caught the eye of Girl That I Very Much Wished I Could Be, and she gave me the subtlest of subtle nods, as though to say, “I, who am indeed very cool, acknowledge your similar coolness.” Looking back on it now, I think it may have been one of the finest moments of my life.
Coolness didn’t come from simply being a smoker, though. There’s a process involved in smoking, and every part of that process contributed to the amount of coolness conferred upon you. None of it was ever made express, of course. You just had to figure it out as you went along. Obviously, the brand of cigarettes you smoked was first on the list, but that wasn’t too difficult to suss out: pretty much everybody I knew smoked Marlboros. Marlboro Lights were also acceptable, but definitely carried fewer cool points. So I started smoking Marlboros, which was nice because my dad also smoked them, and I could steal a couple from him when I ran out. I started out buying the flip-top boxes because that’s what my dad bought (and I have to point out that a pack of cigarettes cost 85 cents at the time. Eighty-five cents! Change for your dollar! It seems crazy now that something that brings so much pleasure could cost so little), but quickly learned that soft packs were cooler. To open the pack in the coolest way, you would pull the red tab around and take off the top part of the cellophane, but leave the rest of the cellophane on so you could stick a book of matches in there. The top of the pack was foil with a band over the middle, and you’d unfold one side of the foil and then tear it off, leaving a hole big enough for maybe four cigarettes. To get one out, you’d put your index finger over most of the hole and do a quick flick of the wrist that, if performed correctly, caused a single cigarette to slide about halfway out. You’d then put the end of the cigarette in your mouth and smoothly pull the pack away.
Lighting a cigarette coolly was a bit more complex. Your choices for lighting were, in ascending order of coolness, cardboard matches, disposable lighters, wooden matches, and refillable metal lighters. There were exceptions, though—if, for instance, you were one of those people who could light a cardboard match not by plucking it from the book and using three or more fingers to hold and strike it, but by leaving it attached and folding it over so that the match head met the striking surface, then flicking it with just your thumb to light it, you were awarded substantial cool points. (I was not one of those people.)
Once the cigarette was lit--well, then things got really complicated. The different ways of holding a cigarette, putting it in your mouth, inhaling and exhaling, flicking the ashes, etc., all of which probably seem to a non-smoker fairly straightforward, are in fact so byzantine that to enumerate them and their attendant coolness points here is a greater task than I’ve set out to accomplish. Let’s move on to what’s actually relevant to this post, which is putting the cigarette out. Again, to the uninitiated it probably seems pretty simple: stub out the butt and walk away. And indeed, you could do that. But where do you stub it out? In an ashtray? Sure, if there’s one around, but if not, where? On the ground? Against a wall? On the bottom of your shoe? In your hand? I’m kidding on that last one, nobody does that in real life. But all of the other ones are viable options, and there are many others, all with varying degrees of coolness.
Do you see how overwhelming all of this can be? Most of the time, I went with the “throw it on the ground and crush it with your shoe” tactic. A classic, to be sure, and nothing to be frowned upon in those days when no one cared about the planet except Woodsy the Owl and the Crying Indian--but nothing special, either. I wanted something better. Something cooler. I wanted to execute The Flick. And I don’t mean just any flick, either. Anybody can do a basic flick: rest the butt on the pad of your thumb and hold it in place with the nail of your middle finger, then flick your finger forward and send the butt arcing through space. Easy, right? But with The Flick, there’s no arc, and that’s the key: The Flick sends your smoldering remnant of tobacco-y goodness rocketing into the Earth with the speed and truth of an arrow from the bow of a fucking Amazon, to explode in a shower of orange sparks. It is, in a word, cool.
Making it even cooler was the fact that the people I knew who regularly discarded their butts using The Flick executed the maneuver in a totally casual manner. They barely seemed to impart any energy into their Flicks, yet those tiny cylinders were launched as if they’d been Flicked by the Incredible Hulk. And they’d always start to turn away even as they were Flicking, as though they’d become so accustomed to successful Flickage that it wasn’t a big deal. “What’s that, a cigarette smashing into the pavement at 90 miles an hour and creating a mini Fourth of July display? Like I haven’t seen that a million times. Have they refilled the vending machine with Ho-Hos yet?”
A variant of The Flick was The Puddle Flick. A Puddle Flick was executed just like a regular Flick, but was even more impressive in that the Flicker had to hit a clear target, namely, a puddle or other nearby collection of water. Properly done, The Puddle Flick instantly extinguished your butt with a satisfying fssst, and carried the bonus of insulating you from the opprobrium of indignant hippies concerned by a burning stub left on the ground: “Hey man, you could totally set the grass on fire, man.” It was my burning--pun totally intended--desire to one day execute a perfect Puddle Flick. I practiced often, but could never quite get it down. I think I focused too much on imparting enough force to achieve the necessary velocity, and not enough on finger mechanics, to the detriment of the entire operation. Typically it seemed that most of the force was directed at my thumb. Either that or it was directed too far to one side of the butt, which just sent it spinning miserably to the ground a few inches from my feet.
OK, so here’s the actual memory I was talking about before this enormous digression: I was at summer school, in Analysis class, and the teacher called a break. The math nerds all stayed inside to like, do extra credit or something. I went out to cop a smoke. When I got outside, there was a dude with a boombox. I don’t know if he was listening to a tape or the radio, but I clearly remember that the song playing was “Mr. Crowley” by Ozzy Osbourne. There was also a chick sitting on the steps. They were both smoking, of course. I didn’t know either of them--something I forgot to mention back at the top is that my high school didn’t offer summer classes, so I was taking them at another school--but this chick was like, a perfect specimen of genus Newjerseyus, species burnoutus, subspecies metalheadus. She had the look that I totally coveted but could never hope to achieve: her dark hair was feathered, as was the norm, but like most burnout chicks, and in opposition to the general female populace, who styled and shellacked their ’dos to within a inch of their lives, the feathers hung lankly in her face. Her eyes were lined heavily in black, but the rest of her face was bare. She had the kind of full-lipped pout that always looked sexy when smoking. Purple feather earrings hung from her lobes. She was wearing a faded baseball jersey, white with periwinkle sleeves; soft, well-worn Levi’s with big holes in the knees; and black moccasin boots with fringe that, oh my god, I totally saw on sale at Nordstrom the other day! I can’t believe they’re back in style after all these years! Since she was sitting down I can’t be sure, but I’m willing to bet there was a bandanna, probably red, in her back pocket.
I sat on the other side of the stairs and smoked my cigarette. I probably exchanged burnout-style pleasantries with my compatriots, but I don’t actually remember if I did. What I remember is that when I was finished, I stood up and prepared to extinguish my cigarette butt. As I did so, I realized that there was a small puddle perhaps six or seven feet away from me. My mind started racing; I knew that this was a perfect opportunity to attempt a Puddle Flick. If I failed, I was subject to unspoken derision from Boombox Dude and Girl That I Very Much Wished I Could Be. But if I succeeded, here were two people who had never known me as that bookish nerd, and would forevermore recall me only as a totally cool person. I teed up the butt. Straining to appear as casual as possible, while secretly freaking out with every molecule in my body, I Flicked. As if loosed from the bow of Hippolyta herself, the tiny missile flew speedily and unerringly to its target. Fssst. A perfectly executed Puddle Flick. Tens all around, except from the Soviet judge, of course. So stunned was I by the sheer perfection I had achieved that I almost forgot to turn immediately and head back inside. But I did, and as I turned I caught the eye of Girl That I Very Much Wished I Could Be, and she gave me the subtlest of subtle nods, as though to say, “I, who am indeed very cool, acknowledge your similar coolness.” Looking back on it now, I think it may have been one of the finest moments of my life.
2 comments:
"The Flick sends your smoldering remnant of tobacco-y goodness rocketing into the Earth with the speed and truth of an arrow from the bow of a fucking Amazon, to explode in a shower of orange sparks."
And it helps if your fingernails shine like justice.
I'm such an anti-fan of cigarettes.
But this was pretty much the best story I've ever read.
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