I’ve already said my piece about smoking. The litter, the smell, not to mention the deleterious effects on a person’s health are evident to all. And yet some people still choose to smoke. Fine by me.
What is not fine by me is the chucking of still-smoldering cigarettes by smokers to fall wherever gravity takes them: out car windows, on sidewalks, even in waterparks patronized by children. Yes, Ima Crunch was well and truly pissed off this afternoon when Beans and Peach returned from camp, Peach hopping on one foot and sporting a mesh bandage from the first aid station at the waterpark they attended today. Some smoker (epithets deleted) flicked a lit cigarette from her or his fingers onto the walkway and strolled on. In a place swarming with children from all over the center of the country, this person, who wouldn’t dream of stepping on a lit cigarette with a bare foot, nonetheless thought it not unreasonable that a child should do so.
Or just as bad, thought nothing at all. Given the many irritating and damaging effects of smoking, it seems to me that to become a smoker, one must necessarily have portions of one’s brain deactivated, including the one that actually, you know, puts out fires before moving on. Do such people scatter rusty nails on sidewalks? Lit matches in dry brush? Discarded paring knives and razor blades on beaches? Then why the hell don’t they think to extinguish their smoldering fags before tossing them at the feet of children?
You don’t have to answer that. There is no answer.
Peach has asked why people do such things. I explained that I really don’t know, but I also took the opportunity to explain karma to her, the upside being mitzvah goreret mitzvah (one good deed causes another), and the downside being the opposite. I told her we don’t know who discarded the lit butt, or what happened to him or her later on. But sometimes people who do thoughtless, rude, or evil things themselves end up on the receiving end of other people’s thoughtless, rude, or evil deeds. We don’t have to wish them ill; sometimes ill befalls those who do ill all by itself.
Shimshonit 
i once stepped on a lit butt while running across the grass near the MIT student center. karma or no, i definitely wished the person ill. i would not have been sorry to have seen someone across the lawn suddenly scream, grab their own foot, and fall to the ground. alas, i do not have superpowers.
also thinking of a friend who used to have a basement apartment on comm ave. in allston. he woke up many mornings with the smell of smoldering mulch wafting in from the area around his window.
I was once sitting on the balcony at my yeshiva, talking on the phone. Someone else comes onto the balcony and starts smoking; to this fellow I point out the large tri-lingual “No smoking / Assur l’ashen / Something-or-other-in-Arabic” sign, with a giant picture of a cigarette with the big red prohibited mark-out symbol. What does he do? He shrugs and continues smoking.
So I called the yeshiva’s manager. Ooh, he rung him out!
What I cannot stand is the people who use their eating utensils to take food from the communal platter. I mean, the fellow in Joy Luck Club was an idiot for pouring soy sauce on the common platter, and maybe even the Chinese mother should be innocent of murder, but still, even he didn’t endanger anyone’s health!
I’ve seriously proposed that anyone using his own eating utensil in this manner should be expelled from the yeshiva, no mercy. Of course, no one listens to me…
Bev and Michael: I think this confirms what we know to be true: smokers manage both to poison their bodies AND offend others. Now THERE’s a habit to be proud of.