Commuter

Issue date: 9/1/07 Section: Campus Life

Media Credit: Jared Silfies The grass around the smoking table is dying and being replaced by cigarette butts and muddy tracks.

I had to kick 26 mangled cigarette filters out of the way to find room to sit down in the shade.

All of the grass is dead around here. In between midday crickets there's a few violent coughs. An older man's on his phone chatting; "Yes I'm at the - " Then a cough equivalent to an atom bomb with bronchitis - "At the college… hold on a sec" Another thunder ball tsunami of broken mucus.

Outside, over here near Penn Hall, the weather's absolutely beautiful. Clouds immense, fluffy like cotton, with still movements of the snail. The breeze is slight. Young adults at beat up picnic tables either on cell phones or throwing cigarette butts in between the two enormous ash tray disposals, all with looks of false confidence on their faces. Dead grass on a serene day.

"Oh, here comes Barney," says a man in a sideways black hat, fingering an invisible beard.

"Ah, I hate Barney," two petite women in enormous sunglasses whisper at once and begin laughing, eventually coughing, nearly spilling their coffee all over their leather purses. Soon the others around are all coughing, eyes bloodshot, throats pierced, the sun not quite ferocious.

An old friend comes to me for small talk. Clearly annoyed with my disinterest he introduces his new cell phone to the world and makes a call. No answer. He drops a cigarette butt literally three inches in front of my shoe.

I watch the smoke do its dance, almost like a filtered tornado that has no ability to remove anything from the ground. Instead the smoke goes follows the wind's vague direction, singing grass in the process. By the end of my little show, a few blades of grass are brown. I pick up the thing and throw it in the disposal.

Walking away some rebel in a pink dress shirt yells, "WHAT? YOU CAN'T JUST THROW IT ON THE GROUND?" Another stampede of mucus and broken coughing and laughter and points proven by throwing burning cigarettes into the calm grass.

"Look at his ass!" someone shouts. It's not that there wasn't any room on the benches, it's that I'd rather have dirty pants than be caught up in that ill tornado.

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