I got caught in the rain when I did my jogging this morning. It was glorious. I ducked under the bleachers when it hailed. I was sharing the track with two women, one of whom was carrying coffee. I considered knocking her down and taking it, but realized the coffee would get spilled, so I considered taking it and then knocking her down, particularly when her friend started jogging. But she was friendly the next time I caught up to her. She said she had just moved here from California and hadn’t seen rain in years. I asked her what part of California she was from, and she said Sherman Oaks. I told her I grew up in Fullerton, and she said, ‘Oh really!! I went to Fullerton College!’ And I said, ‘When it was a Junior College, we used to call it “High School With Ashtrays.” And she said, ‘You could smoke there?!?’ And I said, ‘This was the 70s. You could smoke anywhere, except high school.’

I thought about it going home, and I realized you could smoke in high school, too. My first two years, the authorities relinquished control of one pair of bathrooms for the smokers. Regular kids didn’t go in there more than once. Then they built a chain link cage for the smokers to free up the bathrooms and get them outside.