Cancer Stick Fashion

I am a single man. A portly single man. A portly single man with no sense of fasion. So I have absolutely no right to judge anyone else for having something which detracts from their appearance. But I can't resist this morning.

I am also a non-smoker. And I have to ask out loud if smokers understand exactly what a cigarette does to the perception of a non-smoker. Do they understand that it completely transforms them in our sight, and that it completely destroys any appearance of beauty or dignity they may be trying to project? I was driving to work this morning, and got stuck in traffic on I-84. I looked to my right and saw a beautiful woman enjoying the music on her radio/cd player/iPod/whatever. She was having fun, she was beaing herself, she was unguarded, and truly enjoying the moment. This is the kind of scene in which I find a woman is most beautiful - the shields are down and she is simply letting her inner beauty shine through. It is when you get a glimpse of the spirit within a person.

Then, she raised a cigarette to her lips, drew in a lung-full of smoke, tapped the ashes off, and casually flipped it out the window. It bounced off the door of the car next to her,and smoldered in the oily rain-slicked street.

Instantly, the spell was broken, and she has transformed from a beautiful creation of the King, to something else entirely. First, she is abusing her own body with the carcinogenic effluvia of tobacco. I have seen many family members die of cancer (though not lung cancer) so this is the first image that rampages through my mind. Second, she is polluting her body. This vision of beauty is surrounded with a foul-smelling cloud which is sensible even when it is not visible. Third, she is littering by tossing the spent thing onto the ground, showing a complete disregard for others and for the potential risks of her actions. Fourth, by bouncing it off of another car, she has shown a disregard for another's space and property. Fifth, she has shown herself to be enslaved by something which is more important to her than life. The addiction of tobacco is not something to be discarded lightly.

Now, before I am tarred and feathered by tobacco-loving readers, I know this is an extreme reaction. Even unreasonable. I try to overcome my all-too-human reactions. Especially as a "portly single man with no sense of fashion."

But I think it is only fair to make sure they understand exactly what they are doing to their own image.