Lighter

I bought my first lighter the other day at McLanaghan's. It's a blue/purple ACE lighter with two "compartments" for lighter fluid in it. You can adjust how high the flame goes. It cost me $.63. When I went to buy it, the cashiers were talking about 4/20, which is only slightly more than 2 months away. The oldest cashier - the woman I was talking to - was somewhat scandalized by the concept as a younger girl at the register told her about it. She said 4/20 is the day when everyone smokes pot, and the older woman I was buying from said, "How long has that sh*t been going on?" To which the younger woman responded, "I don't know, forever? Decades?" And my cashier said, NO, NOTHING could have been going on forever. She wondered if it was going on forty years ago when her daughter was born. Her birthday was 4/19, and she wondered what the people in the hospital would have thought of her if she had smoked pot the next day.

In either case, I got my lighter. My bike lock freezes a lot of times when it's cold and there's precipitation, and my dad suggested getting a lighter to unfreeze the ice inside of it so I could stick my key in. I tried it the next morning. The plastic around the metal key insert started smoking, but I held it there for a little bit. I put the key in and the plastic basically melted around it [no major damage, don't worry]. Then I tried putting the lighter up to the key to warm that up, then tried that, but it was useless as well. The lighter idea didn't work. I got to walk to class.

So now I have a lighter and I have no purpose for it. I keep it in my pocket. Sometimes when I walk and I don't wear gloves I just take it out of my jacket pocket and start it. I'm not really a pyro, I don't really like to be stupid with fire, but I think it's pretty and sometimes I just like to look at it, kind of like snow and lights. I wonder what people think of me when they see me doing it - do they assume I smoke? I wonder if anyone's noticed that I never light anything with it. If I were walking right next to myself, I'd have noticed that. I don't know what I would think of myself. Probably not much.

Sometimes I don't let the flame go for long and I just enjoy the sound and the look of the spark. Sometimes it's too windy to have a flame so I have to do that. Sometimes I let the flame go really high and really long - the metal gets hot, and I can see the body of the flame and a spike of flame that goes way higher than the rest. That's from the mechanism that brings the fluid right to the hole where the flame comes out of.

I went to the Simmons piano lounge today after I ate dinner. I had a card in my hand from my mom and two ice cream cones full of stolen Reese's Pieces and my lighter in my coat pocket. I set all of them down on the table before I went to play so I could have my hands free - that big jacket makes it hard to play. I played Samson.

I noticed that there was a girl sitting opposite the piano looking out the huge bay windows at Simmons. She had blonde curly hair and it looked like she was studying. I never realized it before, but that window actually has a beautiful view. It'd be a wonderful place to sit with a friend and watch snow or a thunderstorm or a clear night. I plan on doing this just about as soon as possible.

I wondered if I was annoying her. I wondered if she noticed me at all and I wondered if she would remember me. If someone in ten years asked her, Do you remember that time you were sitting in the Simmons piano lounge studying and some kid came and played this song called Samson on piano and came and left quickly, would she remember? What if they asked, Did you wonder what the card he was holding was for or why he had two ice cream cones full of stolen Reese's Pieces or a lighter in his pocket?

I made a list in my head of things to get when I went back to McLanaghan's after playing piano, and I forget to get milk. I don't know what I will do for breakfast tomorrow.

Peace out.