So, I took the youth group to six flags a little while back. We were all standing in the cue line together, waiting to ride the Georgia Giant which, by the way, is the best coaster on Earth… or at least at Six Flags Over Georgia. —You know, I hate those crumby cue lines. It’s not the wait that bugs me, I can take the wait. I even sort of like the wait. We all stand around chatting, laughing, talking about whatever.— What I hate about the cue line is the throng of other people in the cue with you.
Most of the people are perfectly normal, even pleasant. I’ve been known to, on more than one occasion, strike up a conversation with a complete stranger that lasted until we boarded the ride. But without fail, there are always some really crappy people in the cue line too.
There’s the little antsy kid who, wanting to sit on the rail, sits on your hand which is holding the rail instead. “Just what I wanted,” I say, “kid butt all over my hand.” Where are their parents anyway?
Then there’s the slightly older teenage couple who feel it’s their public duty to elicit a corporate gag reflex by shoving their tongues down each other’s throat while waiting to ride the Scream Machine. Come on you two, seriously, stop.
The worst cue line offender of them all, however, is the smoker … by far. With a total disregard for everyone within nose-shot the smoker mindlessly lights up their cancer stick and then, feigning courtesy, blows their exhaust up in the air, as if this somehow eliminates the cloud hanging around their head.
This last trip to Six Flags put me right next to the smoker in the cue line for the Georgia Giant. You know how cue lines work, right? You pass the same people over and over because the line zig zags back and forth. Well, I passed the smoker once and didn’t say anything. Then I started looking around at the faces of the other people in the cue line. People were shooting the smoker dirty looks when they weren’t looking. They all had disgusted looks on their faces. Everyone noticed the smoker, no one liked the smoker, but no one said a word to the smoker.
One little girl was holding her nose, tugging on her mom’s shorts. I could almost read her lips as she pleadingly looked up at her mom and said, “Mommy that smoker is giving me lung cancer and causing my brain cells to die. They’re contributing to my general dislike of public situations too.” But the mommy was too shy to say anything to the person who was literally killing her little girl. I, however, have a much more brazen personality, so I spoke up.
Leaning over the rail, putting myself within arms-reach of the smoker I said, “You should put that out.” Puzzled, possibly because they had not heard me, but more likely because they couldn’t believe they were being confronted, the smoker returned, “Wha?” Raising my voice just slightly above the din of the crowd and enunciating plainly I expanded on my original statement, “No one likes you smoking, everyone wants you to stop; it’s rude“
This struck a chord, somehow with the smoker. Their face tried to cover up the embarrassment of being ‘caught’ by smiling smugly. But the concurrent action of their hand flicking the cigarette to the ground and their foot snuffing it out spoke of the reality: peer pressure is a powerful tool. But only if the offender is, sometimes forced, to become aware of it.
