A Special Place in Hell

Fair warning: I am now going to pick on a total stranger.

I have no idea who this man is.

I don't know if he works at the cancer center, was visiting a patient at the cancer center, just made a delivery to the cancer center, just used the bathrooms or the vending machines or the water cooler at the cancer center, jumped out of a cake for someone at the cancer center, was trying to proselytize unsuspecting patients at the cancer center, or what.

I cannot tell you why, on a perfectly lovely Friday afternoon, he was sitting on the steps right outside of the cancer center.

And smoking.

The man was sitting OUTSIDE A CANCER CENTER, puffing on a cigarette.

Is it really necessary to have "No Smoking" signs OUTSIDE A CANCER CENTER???

Is it not just understood that one should refrain from POLLUTING THE AIR WITH CARCINOGENS if not everywhere, then, at the very least, OUTSIDE A CANCER CENTER?

I wonder what this guy does the other days of the week.

Hmm.

Maybe on Saturdays he smokes crack while leaning up against a rehab facility.

He probably follows that up by scoring some heroin outside a methadone clinic on Sunday.

If it's Monday, he must be polishing off a pint of Ben & Jerry's outside the local Weight Watchers meeting.

On Tuesdays, I bet you can find him in the cafeteria of a nearby elementary school, working his way through a bag of peanuts.

I'm sure he sucks down Pixy Stix on Wednesdays, comfortably seated outside the headquarters of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

He probably spends Thursdays drinking out of a brown paper bag in the corner of a church basement, waiting for the AA meeting to start.

Then Friday comes, and he buys himself a pack of Marlboros, heads back over to the cancer center, plops himself down on the steps, and lights up.

Maybe he moves out of the way when the guy with the oxygen tank passes by.

Maybe he doesn't.