Why?

You could tell that she wasn't a smoker.

From the way she held the cigarette, to her difficulty in holding the smoke in her mouth, let alone her lungs -- she was new to this.

She got out of the back of a late '90's Ford Expedition, where someone was still back there with a rear-facing baby seat. So I guess I should be somewhat grateful that she elected to get out and 'smoke', rather than subject the one with the least choice of anyone in the vehicle.

It was hard to size up this group. A white Expedition with a Confederate Flag where the front license plate would go on a vehicle in a state that requires it. Apparently, Florida and Georgia
do not. Five of them filed out of the large SUV. Four of them went to the restroom, the fifth stood outside to 'smoke.' Two of the young men were wearing muscle shirts. The three young women were all wearing belly shirts, had navel piercings, and appeared to be hanging all over the two young men I could see. I couldn't tell the gender of the person who stayed with the baby.

When two police cars screamed by with lights and sirens blazing, the two young men gestured and shouted in the direction of the police cars. One of them, a redhead, grabbed his crotch and pointed with two fingers in a decidedly 'urban' fashion, if you will, at the cars. I couldn't hear him, but all I could make out from reading his lips was, "Come get some of this, bitch!" Maybe he was just happy that they weren't after him for a change.

While all this was going on, the two other young women (not the one choking and turning green from what looked to be maybe her fifth or sixth Marlboro Red) were sharing a single, lit cigarette. One of the men snatched it from her. He took a drag. The other young man took it from the redheaded young man and took a drag -- but the redhead never took his fingers off it. It was a strange visual dynamic that seemed to transcend any necessary description of the matter.

The first girl lit another cigarette and tried desperately to get all the moves down, the posture, the fidgeting with the cigarette for the sake of looking busy and looking like she'd done it before.

Cigarettes are an acquired taste, I guess. I don't know, I never smoked. It never appealed to me. I've tried cigarettes, certainly. But I could never understand the appeal. I actually do like the taste of a quality, handmade cigar. But I think that's different, it's a dynamic. If I smoke one cigar a year, it's a heavy year. If I had access to the kind of Cuban cigar I smoked in Mexico last year, I might smoke them all the time. It was strangely... Wonderful.

No one ever picks up her first cigarette and enjoys it -- at least the physical attributes. The taste, the burning sensation in her nose, throat and sinuses; the smell.

So, why? Why bother?

I fear that it's for the least compelling reason of all.

Everyone else is doing it.