The annoying old lady
Ok, Gianluca and I are guilty of one of modern society’s most abhorred crimes: we’re smokers.
We are treated like pariahs in our old Europe, so we expected to be put in a pillory in the States, but we were surprised: in Miami, especially in Miami Beach, there are a lot of smokers, maybe due to the high number of Cubans and Latino Americans. If you respect the smoking bans nobody criticizes you.
One day we decided to visit the wonderful Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (link to the article) and, imaging that smoking would be totally forbidden inside, we lit a cigarette outside in the shade of a tree in a corner of the car park.
After a couple of puffs we saw an old skinny lady with a baseball cap approaching and complaining loudly about those ill-mannered air polluters and dangers to society: the smokers.
Well, it seemed to me that she was exaggerating: we were a long way from everyone and we couldn’t “pollute” anyone. Anyway, I felt a little uncomfortable until… the lady walked up to a V8 5000cc pick up, opened the door, started the engine and drove away (how much CO2 does she produce?)
No need to comment.
P.S. While we were on the train that makes the tour of the park, an American gentleman, who was a frequent visitor to the garden, was telling some foreign tourists how pleasant it was for him to sit on a bench in front of the lake and smoke his cigar.
