Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/idlingbus.mp3

or read his story below:

WHAT’S BETTER THAN INHALING BEHIND AN IDLING BUS?

She is standing before an old stained-glass church that houses the honors program at a local university. She is working on her tobaccolaureate degree.

Alone, she puffs away, gazing wistfully at the branches of a big tree, who knows what,  going through her mind.

If you take time to look, you’ll see other nicotined scholars, only they seem more isolated than they were prior to the advent of palmed phones.

Back then, puffers were the last sociable people on earth. They stood in groups before buildings high and low, chatting and sharing and signifying and learning more about each other than they’d ever learn inside their cocooned work places, where they stared at  screens or dozed spasmodically or filed nails or filed files.

Outside, in the particulated air, they grew to know little things about the people they seldom spoke with once inside the buildings.

Then, the pod people devices came along, so that now, even though puffers still stand outside, many only talk into the ether to people whose bodies are not present, ignoring fellow solitudes who stand just inches away, talking into their armpits as if their conversations deal with life-threatening issues. Or they speak silently with pecking thumbs.

Me? What do I inhale each day that is half better than what these folks inhale?