Conversation between two girls (age 17-18), overheard on a bus somewhere...

- Do you have any cigarettes?
- Yeah, I have. Do you want to have one when we're there?
- Sure. Thanks. Does your Mom allow you to smoke, by the way? My Mom don't.
- My does. She's all-right.
- Mmm. Well, she smokes, of course but mine doesn't. That's the difference.
- Guess so. Mom never really discourages me, I mean like trying to tell not to smoke, but sometimes she makes me hesitate.
- Why?
- Well, she's so funny when her sister, my aunt, is there. Almost once a week my aunt drops in for a cup of coffee. We have coffee together, the three of us, and sometimes I smoke a cigarette together with them, then I go up to my room to study. You know what they do? They can chat for hours, and they chain smoke all the time. Mom isn't a chain smoker really, and my aunt isn't either, but those evenings... They're incredible. They smoke and smoke and smoke, and after I while I always hear my Mom cough more and more. And soon, my aunt starts, too. They chat, laugh, smoke and cough the whole evening. Last time, I just sat there listening to them. I heard my poor Mom cough more and more often, and my aunt too. After a while, they sounded so funny, so I went down to them. Should've seen the ash-tray, and there was no end on it. Just as I came there, my aunt was babbling about her neighbours and Mom was in the middle of a coughing fit, sitting there with the cigarette in one hand and the other hand over mouth. "Hello there", Mom said when a coughing fit interrupted my aunt.
"Just had to go down and look after you", I smiled and made a gesture towards the ash-tray. They both started to laugh, and for both of them it turned into coughing fits. It made them laugh even more. Can you imagine, two women sitting there with cigarettes in their hands, laughing and coughing at the same time? "Yeah, wonder what our lungs look like", my aunt said when she had stopped coughing. Mom had got a worse coughing fit which lasted a little longer. "I'm working hard to fill your Mom with smoke", she joked. "I hope you will cough up your lungs tonight", Mom replied and they both started to laugh again. My aunt got a new coughing fit and put the cigarette in the ash-tray, then she cupped her hands up over her nose and mouth. I went back to my books and they went on. Just as aunt was about to leave, she got a huge coughing fit and coughed all the time while putting her coat on. I gave her a hug before she left and she was almost like shakening from her coughing fit.
- Did your Mom stop smoking, then?
- No, we sat down together and had two cigarettes each. I noticed how she was coughing. It was quite a funny sight later, when she took that ash-tray, full of butts and brought to the kitchen, coughing deeply all the time. It's terrible after those evenings, when she gets her night cough. She sounds like something's lathering inside her chest and I hear her go into the bathroom to spit it out.
- Hmmm. Maybe we'll sound like that in ten or twenty years.
- Maybe. Sometimes when I hear my Mom cough like that, I almost hate my aunt, if it wasn't for her she wouldn't smoke that much. She's destroying my little Mom's poor lungs.
- Do you want your Mom to quit?
- Sometimes. No, actually, by the way. I love her smoky lungs the way they are and I know she does too. Sometimes, after those evening, she smiles, sighes and says things like "I'll guess we'll get lung cancer both of us" and massages herself over the chest. For some reason, it always makes me feel that she should smoke even more, and it always makes me lit another cigarette. Strange. But, sometimes when I feel sorry because she's coughing so much, I start thinking about how she told me that it was her sister who got her into the smoking. And, after she had quit smoking while pregnant, it was my aunt who made her start again when I was eight or nine or something. I still can remember how she encouraged Mom to smoke more and more, to quickly become a real smoker again. Mom stood there on the floor, bending her body forward and just coughing and coughing and my aunt just told her to smoke more, which she did. It was if like my aunt felt some sort of pleasure seing her little sister cough so she almost lost the air.

Here, the girls unfortunately left the bus. They put their cigarettes between their lips before they were out of sight.