I thought you folks would find this recent encounter with an absolutely true dark side moment interesting. By the way, this encounter is the honest to god truth:
I ran into a former High School student I taught 3 years ago at a bar this past Halloween weekend, which brought up some interesting issues. Christy was smoking out in front of the bar and was pretty drunk when I ran into her. Physically, she is gorgeous, if a bit slutty. She is about 5’2, very thin, with sharp almost feline features, light blue eyes, a deep tan and long brown hair with blonde highlights. She was always a really smart student, although a huge slacker and had a tremendous rebellious streak that often manifested itself through constantly cutting class, sleeping with nearly anyone available, doing a lot of drugs, and chain smoking. I knew she had been referred to the office several times for being caught smoking on school grounds, but I sure as hell was never going to refer her and she knew it. I smoked with her a few times behind the gym, and found her to be a pretty interesting and attractive, even if rather crazy. She came to class smelling strongly like smoke pretty much every day, which isn’t entirely uncommon for high school girls, but then some captivating things started happening. During the spring of her senior year she started missing alot of school with legitimate medical excuses from a lung condition. She was hospitalized several times with severe asthma attacks, apparently largely brought on by smoking. When I talked to her about it then, albeit with more than a few sinister thoughts on my mind, I assured her that it was nothing to worry about, and that she should continue to smoke as much as she wanted to. She told me that the doctors had told her that she could possibly be developing early stage emphysema. I knew she had been smoking since she was a freshman in high school, because she was in a class that I was student teaching in when I first met her, and I could smell the smoke on her then. But, I sorta doubted that she really had early stage emphysema, so my guess is that it was either a deliberate exaggeration on her part or a misunderstanding of what the doctors had told her was wrong with her lungs. In any event, I certainly encouraged her to ignore the doctors, and to smoke as much as she wanted to. She told me that she had no intention of quitting, as she would cough with a surprisingly deep smokers cough for someone so young.
So then, this past weekend, she told me more interesting tales of lung damage while smoking one cigarette after another in front of a bar near the college she attends. Christy said that in June of this last summer, she had a lung collapse. She described it pretty accurately from what I understand, saying that it felt like someone was stabbing her in the chest, and that she couldn’t move, and was on the ground in excruciating pain after getting out of a car. Her friend took her to the ER, and they figured out it was a collapsed lung. She said they partially reinflated her lung, and recommended that she stop smoking immediately, because it had the possibility of actually killing her in a very short period of time. She of course, continued to smoke, and her lung collapsed a second time back in August. This time, the doctors put a stint in her lung, and told her that one of her lungs was only 40% operational. She said the doctors told her the lung damage wasn’t done entirely through cigarettes, because some people just have weaker lungs than others. Plus, she smoked a lot of weed, and probably other things as well, in addition to a healthy cigarette addiction, so the doctors told her it was probably lung damage from multiple causes. She says she can’t really run or do physically exerting activities anymore even though she’s just 21, but that despite their warnings, she continues to smoke. She says she has tried to smoke less, down from the pack and half a day to two packs per day she was previously smoking. But, she said that she didn’t really want to stop smoking and she figured that since she was already addicted, there was no use trying to stop. When I asked her how much she smoked, she said she still smoked about a pack a day, although less on some days when her chest hurt, and that she always has a pack of Menthols around that she smokes sometimes when the Camel Filters hurt her chest too much.
While I don’t think she was necessarily pursuing intentional lung damage, her devil may care attitude towards the destruction of her lungs was totally awing. I did what any good darksider would do, and I let her know that I applauded her efforts to continue her addiction, despite the medical difficulties. She again told me that she loved smoking, and that she was not going to give it up no matter what.
And, no, I did not get lucky that night at the bar.
