I'm a bastard!
Monday, August 11, 2008
To go along with the "How to be a Bastard" series, I will include anecdotes of being a bastard whenever I can. This weekend, I had the opportunity to be an absolute bastard to the people who were fundraising for D.A.R.E. outside of a Wal-Greens by my house.
What happened is that I stopped by the Wal-Greens to pick up a soda on my way to work at the cigar shop. As I entered the store I saw the two women working the table and quickly ducked inside so that I wouldn't have to deal with whatever it was that they were doing. As I was leaving the store, the younger of the two women (about 25, kinda cute) called me over. She started giving me the spiel about the D.A.R.E. program and asking me if I had been in it. When I told her that they made me go through it when I was in school, she said that I qualified for a D.A.R.E. t-shirt. (It would only cost me a donation of $15 for one or $25 for two.)
Now remember that I work for a cigar shop. I politely explained that my income was derieved through the sale of tobacco products. All of these products contain nicoteine. Nicoteine is a drug. In the form that we sell it, nicoteine has no benefit to the user at all. Therefore, logically I make my money from people abusing a drug and their program runs contrary to my interests of staying gainfully employed.
Both of the women tried to counter my argument by saying that my company only sold tobacco to adults and that their program was for litttle kids. (I decided to leave out any arguments about hooking new smokers when they are young, and stick to how companies do business.) I told the women that the only reason why companies, including mine, don't sell to kids under the age of 18 is because the law forbids us from doing so. If there weren't a lw preventing it, then we would do it.
Apparently these two women thought that every company was guided by something called morals instead of profits because they took my statement to mean that I thought that kids should be allowed to smoke cigarettes (I don't think that anyone should be allowed to smoke cigarettes. Cigars yes, cigarettes no.) and asked em if this was the case. At this point, I decided to have a little bit of fun with them and show how the pro-choice argument can be subverted at the same time. I told both of them that I thought that each person had the right to choose what they do with their body. Apparently this still didn't sink in because they repeated their question of if I thought that kids should be allowed to smoke cigarettes. Again I repeated that I thought that each person should have the right to choose what they want to do with their body.
Since I knew that nothing that I said would change the minds of the two women, I chose to leave at that moment. As I was walking away I heard the older woman say "I think that's the most disturbing thing that I have heard all day." The younger woman replied "I want to cry."
Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 8:00 AM
Labels: anecdote, bastard, DARE, making people want to cry
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