wherever your feetsies may go

There is good smoke and there is bad smoke:

first the good, thick kind that comes from gnarled old pipes with character and goes drifting inquisitively around, seeping into the rich red-brown, weathered woods of cozy, leaded-windowpaned pubs on cobbled country lanes, and then the nasty, thin kind that leaks out of cigarettes and impregnates the air with the promise of cancer. This distinction is not, strictly speaking, at all logical. Nonetheless, it is true.

In most public places in North America, they are now both illegal. Still, a few locales of the sort in which both good and bad smoke linger with an air of proprietary belonging yet hold out and Charlotte, North Carolina - the yuppie center of one of the major tobacco-producing states - is definitely a place you'd expect to find the latter. True to locale, the "Fox and Hound" in Ballantyne Commons, a clear example of such a "bad smoke" haven, does not (beyond its name) in any way presume to the sort of atmosphere that would encourage restive camaraderie among friends. Banks of televisions blare at top volume from nearly every inch of wall and fluorescent lights radiate coldly from high ceilings of antiseptic drywall. There's not a friendly dirt particle in the place. Nonetheless, sitting there a week ago at a table ringed with some of my oldest friends, I couldn't help feeling that warm, cheesy, spirit-suffusing glow that permeates truly homely (in the best sense of that word) surroundings. It was the tail end of our ten year high school graduation reunion and oh so good to be a little bit at home, transported by the company I was keeping to the place that will probably always tug at an important bit of myself.

Having grown up in Peru together, see, we were gathered to celebrate not just a shared educational experience, but to remember as well our truly blessed formative years - the life we once shared that, although imperfect, formed us into the oddball crew we had come to be. For the past ten years we'd been adapting ourselves in a hodge-podge variety of ways to a culture that at one time or another we had each doubted could ever be fully our own. It was good to return, if only for a while, to what once was, and to see how different we'd all become as we went about the business of staying pretty much the same.

Micheal, for instance, the deranged chap about whom I've written periodically on this site, was still the resident nutbar - complete with a rusty late-eighties minivan sporting a sign that said "For Sale: $25,250.00 FIRM (or will trade for lawnmower)", tattoos labeling his feet so he wouldn't get confused, and that famous mischievous Michael grin. Still, ten years and a stint in the U.S. military seemed to have calmed and centered him (a bit) - adulthood had brought with it the self-assurance that all those blissful Peruvian years under the benevolent dictatorship of his stern parents never could have. And Michael, who'd hated reading anything but "Calvin & Hobbes", had moved on to more sopissticated philosophical humorous satire and was reading Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" (an odd choice for a military man, yes, but more proof that the more things change, the more they then stay the same).

Ben, who had spent so much time in the favelas of Brazil working with street kids, seemed (at least at the Fox and Hound) to have changed the most. He was absent-mindedly running a finger around the frosted-glass holder in the ornate metal frame in the middle of the table when his finger got a bit too close to the flame and he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of pain. Seth and I shot glances at each other. This was Ben, after all, the guy who'd practically aced the SAT's and ACT's - the fellow who'd spent his childhood reading all the way through the Encyclopedias - for fun! Clearly, too much time spent helping people - away from the life of the mind - had somewhat addled his noodle.

Of course, Seth and I did what any good old friends would do in that situation - we mocked him mercilessly. I started off loudly decrying the downfall of our once-most astute academic and then Seth chipped in with a deepened voice and began to say, ponderously, "Ouch. Fire hurt Ben. Ben no like fire. Fire hot." I joined in with more faux-impersonation and then Paul hopped on the funwagon for a while as Ben smiled the tolerant smile of one who has learned nothing from the stepped-on of the world, if not humility.

Eventually, we ran out of material. The last giggle subsided and then Ben quietly broke the silence. "Hey, guys. Check this out... I want to show you something." With this he slowly upended the candle holder and out slid... a small, black plastic cylinder, out of which bubbled a flickering, glass-encased "flame".

A pause.

Then, oh then, did the fit really hit the shan. We laughed. We giggled. We squeaked, slapped each other on the backs and reveled in the trouncing we had just received. Ben, apparently, had forgotten that it is unsportsmanlike to engage in a battle of wits with unarmed opponents. "Well", he said, "I realized it was not real, but that you guys didn't know that, so I thought..." and he shrugged.

Ah, Ben. Good ole Ben. And not just Ben - Life, too. Life is full of crazy surprises, not the least of which are the ones so crazy in their unsurprisingness. It was good to be there, choking on the arsenic-laced smoke of North Carolina with friends. Good to see that people grow, flourish, have kids, develop and stay basically the same.

Herodotus, or some such other dead Greek dude, said that how you finish is determined by how you start. While I still maintain the hope that drastic change is indeed possible, it is good to know that a strand still ties me to my past, and that even though I am less the confused, lost, insecure, hormonal teenager who left Peru ten years back, I am still me and, most likely, will continue right on being so.