It's none of your business -- continued

I gave a small shake of my head and told her that, actually, I’d like to try to help her. Then I went into the pitch I’d worked out over several other tries at getting people to stop smoking. How I shouldn’t even be here today, how smoking gave me COPD which has no cure, and how I was one of the lucky ones. I had a double lung transplant.

During my short speech the color had drained from the smoker’s face. Thinking we were somewhere on the same page, I smiled softly and told her I’d seen her smoking outside before she came into the restaurant. I got a completely unexpected response. She suddenly pushed back from the table, hissed that it was none of my business -- and then started crying.

In the next ten minutes, sitting at that table, I learned a number of things. First, the four of them had a pact to stop smoking. Two of them were still sneaking an occasion cigarette. They were a quartet of close, very supportive friends. And I should be extremely careful about sticking my nose into other people’s business – but not give up my campaign. All of them thanked me for giving them new incentive to stop smoking.

Of course, I apologized before I left. I don’t know what they thought of the glass of Chablis I asked the waiter to pour them.