I decided today to take a little diversion and tell you about a guy I saw at my local convenience store. What an Arrogant Jerk.
This guy was smoking outside as he talked to one of the store employees. She was likely taking a break. He appeared to be a friend or something.
Now don’t get me wrong; smoking was not his crime. Really now, if you want to suck filtered tar into your lungs that is your business. And in my opinion those “Truth” commercials are only telling you the half they think will scare you. I don’t smoke but think its fine for you. Anyway…
This guy lights up while I am rummaging in my car for some spare change when something grabs his attention and he feels the need to head into the store. In a single motion that would make young Obi-Wan Kenobi jealous, he reaches up, grabs the lit cigarette from his lips, and swings it down to his side, letting go at just the right moment to make me think that he couldn’t have planned a better release. The cigarette, in all its still-burning glory, went flying backwards into the parking lot and rolled to a smoldering stop.
Littering has been one of my pet peeves since those Indian commercials I grew up with during the early ‘70s. I decided at an early age that with at least a couple million years of evolution behind us, we ought to at least have progressed to a point at which we all agree there is a certain place to throw our Styrofoam clamshells, empty bottles, and yes; even finished cigarettes. Kind of like the rules for using a toilet; we all agree we should, and for obvious reasons.
The guy didn’t even have the decency to stomp it out. I live in an arid mountain region and this was a gas station for heaven’s sake.
And judging by the number of cigarette butts I saw lying around the store parking lot, I can assume that smokers in general have a problem with the basic rules of decency. I am guessing that smokers would feel a little less picked on if they could find a way to join the rest of us at the top end of the chain where throwing your trash wherever you happen to be when you are through with it is socially unacceptable. That Indian shed his tear over thirty years ago. You’d think even smokers would have caught on by now.
So this is my note for the day, and my plea to the Littering Smoker at the convenience store ‘down the corner’: Find a better place to put your trash, you Arrogant Jerk.
