Once upon a time smoking was not considered a capital offense in America. Cigarette smoking was everywhere and anywhere. Even cardiologists smoked.
A procession of surgeon generals preached that cigarette smoking wasn’t exactly kind to your lungs, but most people didn’t believe it until they coughed up a lung or two into their lobster bisque.
Times change. Now most folks realize that smoking incinerates your lungs and dramatically moves up your expiration date.
States jacked up taxes on cigarettes to astronomical levels to punish smokers for their sin.
Now you pay through the nose to burn a hole in your nose. In Pennsylvania the average price for a pack of cigarettes is $6.85.
So unless you have money to burn along with your health or have the IQ of an ashtray, you get the point.
Or you would think. Judging by the frequency and quantity of cigarette butts thrown against my curb, there still are plenty of smokers fouling the land. I suspect their minds are dark woods full of lightning bugs glowing in cigarette smoke.
As lord of my manor, I don’t remember including cigarette butts on my castle manifest.
Repeatedly picking up cigarette butts makes my jaws tighter than a clam with lockjaw. It’s a chore that eats at my time and my stomach lining.
And perplexes me. Why is my house squarely in the crosshairs of tossed cigarettes? Especially since my house is on the side of the street where passengers are closest to the curb.
If you think about it, most vehicles have no passengers. So the drivers tossing butts at my house must all be trick-shot artists firing them through the passenger window or have the arm strength of an NFL quarterback going deep from the other side of the street.
It’s enough to make me want to disembowel all of them. Then I realize that it’s not prudent to round up a whole posse of murder convictions.
Leo Tolstoy, regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time, once wrote that time and patience are the strongest of all warriors.
So I’ve opted to wait out all these hopelessly addicted tobacco addicts until they’re down to their last cigarette. Hopefully that happens before my back gives out.
