Hear Tell Of Cigarettes

You see some pretty vile practices in evidence out in public. People spit on the sidewalk, go through the garbage and just plain smell awful. I recall walking to a party in a neighborhood of poor reputation and being asked for a cigarette by a man in the act of urinating in public. That was what you call a two-fer of unpleasant behavior. None of those are very subtle offenses to the sensibility, I think that we all can agree.

I thought to write on this subject after consideration of a significantly more subdued crime. I guess it is more a case of being insensible than insensitive. Undoubtedly you have seen the same thing, maybe without noticing it or finding it remarkable in the least. What I refer to is the act of placing a new, unlit cigarette behind the ear with the intent to smoke it imminently. I see this quite a bit on the subway and in other places where smoking is forbidden.

It annoys me to no end. It's a good thing of course that the person in question chooses not to flout the law, but why must they be ready so far in advance of the moment when smoking becomes permissible? I understand this no better than I do the act of remotely unlocking one's car long before getting close enough to actually enter it. I see no advantage beyond shaving a second or so from the wait to smoke, unless the cigarette becomes more delicious for having escaped the confines of the pack to breath at length.

Indeed, it seems to me that the cigarette must surely become even more vile from being stored against the the skin and perhaps absorbing sweat if not dead skin flakes. Then again, these may be mere quibbles compared with the horrible specter of cancer which the smoking of the cigarette presages. I believe firmly in the right of the individual to debase and destroy themselves if they choose, but I never have cared for the conference of those things on the unwilling bystander. If you want to do gross things with your cigarettes, do it in my absence so that I don't have to think about it.