Raivynn's Roost: Where There's Smoke ...

This post may piss off some of you, my fine readers, but it is something which has been gnawing at me for years.

Smokers.

More specific, smoking habits.

I am a non-smoker. I've tried it once or twice, just to see what the attraction to it is, but I got no joy or sense of well-being from it. I got a nasty taste in my mouth, coughing fits, and a sense of why-in-hell-do-people-do-this being.

I don't care that people smoke. It's your lungs. The data on smoking's effects are widely known. What you do in your own house, or in your car, is your own business.

But, something I've noticed, even smokers seem to not want the lousy things in their car.

Watch as people drive down the road. You will see hands casually flipped out windows, cigarettes tightly clenched between two fingers, ashes and smoke drifting back in the rush of wind. Then, many exhale the smoke they just sucked from their paper-wrapped stick of chemically enhanced burning plant matter out the same window.

The smoker doesn't want the smoke in the car -- and not just because a non-smoker may be traveling with them. Most are by themselves, or the passenger also has their tobacco rocket hanging outside the car on their side.

Why is this? The smoker inhales the foul fumes voluntarily. What difference does it make that the smoke from the lit cigarette wafts about the cabin of their vehicle? Does it clash with the smell of the green paper pine tree dangling from the rearview mirror? Maybe the smoke stains on the cloth roof header, or the fine layer of carcinogenic particulates drifting lazily down to the dashboard and leather upholstered, heated, massage, bucket seats are to blame.

Then, when the cigarette is down to the final burning embers, nicotine stained fingers casually *flip* the smoldering stub out the window to land in the gutter ... or maybe the tinder dry grass on the median. Is the ashtray in the car not good enough? Are they afraid of taking their eyes off the road and causing a horrendous wreck by flipping up the ashtray lid and stubbing the cigarette out?

I think those rude people are just too damn lazy to clean their discarded detritus from those admittedly cramped butt holders (err, the ashtrays, not the actual seats). I feel they don't want to have trash in their nice, clean cars, so the spent cigarette finds its way into the environment one mile at a time.

Of course, that theory doesn't quite explain those beer-bellied, truck-hatted blue-collar smokers whose pick-em-up trucks are so crammed with undone paperwork, old fast food wrappers, and last weeks laundry that keeping a flaming object in the cab poses a serious fire safety hazard.

Smoke it if you must, but keep it in your own vehicle.

And for the sake of tired lungs everywhere, if you are at a non-smoking place of business, and you find yourself desperately in need of inducing smoke into your body, don't do it in the freakin' entrance of the establishment. Now you just made everyone who goes in or out have to breath that crap whether they wanted to or not.

This rant was brought to you by the person who had had to walk through a miasmic cloud of foul fumes to eat lunch, and later had a carelessly flicked cigarette butt skitter blazing across the windshield of her car at a stoplight after.

Makes me want to do a little smoking of my own ... out of my ears!