The insect had returned home after fighting, in its imagination, against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. With a pack of Camels, Georgia and I could pretend that we had lived through all the scenes we'd witnessed in the movies. To pretend to be Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca is harmless enough, I guess. It's an attempt to import into a bland suburban life a little seasoning, a little style. Style doesn't exist only for itself.
Style is a language.
Like language, style is how an individual expresses his or her sense of place in a community. Whether you're an adult driving a Corvette, an adolescent lighting a Camel cigarette, or a little boy wearing a Batman costume on Halloween, you're using style deliberately to make a statement. By the time you're a junior or senior in high school, the terror of being left out can be almost pathological. As I witnessed my daughter almost beside herself with excitement on a Friday or Saturday night before a party, I cringed inside, remembering things I would just as soon forget. In high school, Saturday night was like an approaching final exam.