Role Model

So school has started again and the onslaught of kids is back. Each morning as I walk to the bus stop, I pass dozens of uniformed kids going the opposite direction to the school across the street from my house.

Last year, it felt like I was running the gauntlet each morning. It was as if I had regressed back to that timid, shy, geeky, gawky girl carrying too many books and wearing too thick glasses and too out of style clothes with too straight hair. It felt like they were judging me. It was pathetic, and I knew it even then. I mean, these are 10-14 year olds, for fuck's sake. I'm 35. That was how beaten down I was then, how far my self-esteem and confidence had plummeted.

This year, well, this year it's all different. There's a spring in my step that I haven't had in a long time. Except I do feel bad about one thing: my last cigarette of the morning which I always smoke on the way to the bus. I thought about it earlier this week, and wondered if perhaps I was not being a good role model, strolling down the street waving my cancer stick around. Then I saw that at least 2/3 of them are carrying McDonald's bags to school and/or eating McD's on the way and I said to myself, Fuck it, they've already got bad role models, I'm going to enjoy my leisurely death.

I never wanted to be a role model anyway.