Have we lost our manners or our minds ... or both?

Someone posted this up on that yahoo questions-answers website, and the issue was resolved and closed before I could add my input.

"Would this be considered rude?
Last week I was at Disney World, and I stopped for a cigarette break in one of the "designated smoking areas", which is clearly marked and written on all the trashcans and ashtrays as the only places to smoke in the park. It's even marked on the maps so people know exactly where they're located.

Well, all was fine and dandy until about a minute after I sat down and lit up a cigarette, when a couple decided to sit down next to me in the smoker's area to eat. After a few seconds, the lady started doing the "fake cough" that non-smokers do when they're annoyed by your smoking, then she just gave me an evil death stare. When I didn't respond to her, she went off on me about how disgusting smoking is and saying "Can't you see we're f**king trying to eat here?!?!"

I was shocked. Yes, I know smoking is disgusting and gross and yadda yadda yadda... but if she felt that strongly about it, why on Earth would she sit down in the smoker's area to eat her food? Out of all the places in Disney World to sit down, you choose to sit in the smoker's area and then yell at ME?!? The area is CLEARLY marked... she could have sat across the street... I don't get it.

So was it rude for her to yell at me or did I do something wrong that I'm not aware of? Why would she sit next to me in the smoking area if she felt so strongly about smoking? I'm so confused.
2 weeks ago
Additional Details
2 weeks ago

Thanks for the answers everybody. I wish I wasn't so non-confrontational... I wish I said something to her, but I was just in shock that I was being cussed out at Disney World of all places for seemingly doing nothing wrong.

I know most nonsmokers are offended by cigarette smoke, and I'm pretty used to being berated for it, so I always try to be as polite as possible, which I thought I was doing by smoking in one of the few places I was allowed to in the park.

I don't know if she was trying to prove a point or what she was trying to achieve by sitting there... I mean, she was sitting practically right in front of the ashtray, so she obviously knew she was in the smoker's area. I seriously don't understand."


Something no one mentioned in their responses to this poor guy: not only was it a designated smoking area, he was in that place FIRST. When it comes to the great outdoors, unless there is a sign that clearly says NO SMOKING, if I see someone smoking and I choose to sit next to them,I have zero right to complain.

More and more lately, it seems that when it comes to smoking, people have utterly forgotten their manners -- and I am NOT talking about the smokers!

As most of you know, I do not smoke. But I passionately object to people using their dislike of smoking as a screen for simple, ugly rudeness. It's the smokers today -- who will be attacked tomorrow?

And now I will step down from my soapbox and let my blood pressure return to normal.

Miscellany

My new shoes are polished for church tomorrow. I have made a decision this new year: though lacking empirical or emotional evidence, I will choose to believe.

***

I took my Beloved, aka Sweetie, to historic Williamsburg today. While She browsed through a store to Her liking, I sat on a bench in the unexpected sunshine and enjoyed the fragrance of a nearby Marlboro menthol being enjoyed by a Woman as She read a novel at the other end of the bench.

Sensory pleasures: sweet sunshine and the faint fragrance of fine tobacco shared gently, without words, without animosity ...

***
"Why is it that the only things you ever buy in these places are food?" my Beloved asked me. She had purchased a candle and some decorative doo-dads and stocking stuffers for next year. I was happily cradling a sack of Muscovado sugar and a jar of Zanzibar spice blend.

"Food makes memories," I told Her.

The exotic sugar will be perfect for making a loaf of dark, Grant bread.

***
I can't stand commercials that show only Women cleaning homes. We are not in the 1950's anymore, and there are plenty of men who vacuum, mop and otherwise help care for the homes they live in.

Likewise, I would like to bounce a brick off the head of whatever advertising moron has recently put out a commercial declaring that "men don't bake."

Like hell we don't. I can chop up a log into kindling, pitch a tent, fix my car or do other supposedly manly chores. And I bake. I can deeply appreciate a fine set of swaying Feminine glutes gliding past me or, more appropriately, the charms of my own Beloved. And I bake.

In fact, I find a man fearful of his own kitchen to be quite pathetic.

***
I tried out a new bread recipe the other day but failed to take a picture. It was a rich, whole wheat, British granary cob, round as a pillow and crusted with cracked wheat.

Guess I'll make it again and record the evidence.

***
We are home with our treasures -- the ones we bought and the ones in memory.

A November moment

She was a lovely Lady of Asiatic extraction, sheltering Herself in an office doorway as I passed by.

She was enduring this chilly exile in order to enjoy a cigarette.

She drew in a "snap" inhale as I approached, a nearly lost art in the world of smoking. I smiled and bid Her a warm hello, which I hope made it very clear that at least one person on Planet Earth did not in the least mind a little secondhand smoke drifting his way, nor did I find the sight of Her infuriating, engaged in a still legal but proscribed activity such as is the enjoyment of tobacco these days. (There are certain states where new restrictions make it all too clear that beyond the protection of health, certain legislators do not even wish to see anyone smoking in public).

I slid into my car and examined my maps for directions back out of the city. I caught a final glimpse of Her carefully extinguishing Her cigarette in an ashtray several footsteps away -- proving that not all smokers are butt-flinging reprobates.

Tobacco

Two of my blog friends have written about their personal history with tobacco this week, so I thought I'd put my two cents in.

A long time ago, when tempers were raging hot about the temperance movement, a politician was asked where he stood on the issue of alcohol, and he said something like this:

"Well, if you're talking about the spirits that warm the soul on a cold winter day, the convivial refreshment that gladdens the hearts of friends, I'm for it.

If you're talking about the demon drink that drives a man to madness, breaks up families and brings a tear to the faces of wives and children, I'm against it."

That is how I would express my feelings on the golden weed.

The aroma of a pipe is sweet and pleasant and it was once good enough for Santa Claus. A good cigar also perfumes the air and conveys a touch of class. And there is a camaraderie among smokers of cigarettes that we non-smokers can't replicate; there is a sultry glamour when a beautiful Woman leans in for a gentleman to give Her a light. And for a certain kind of guy, crimson lipstick on a snow-white filter lights a fire as hot as a cigarette's glowing cherry, creamy smoke rising from soft red lips melts him like butter in a hot pan -- but I've gone on about that before and won't tonight.

That side of tobacco cannot be denied, cannot be ignored, if we would speak truthfully and in totality about it.

But the sight of some down-on-his-luck soul digging through a public ashtray for a smokeable butt; the early aging of a beautiful face; the mounds of discarded butts at every stoplight; the sad stories of people who have lost loved ones prematurely -- this is the dark side of tobacco.

Oakland's stupid idea

I am in a ranting mood today, it seems.

Oakland, California has just approved a measure that will ban smoking in public parks, ATM lines, bus stops and a half dozen other public places.

Now I can understand banning the weed in airplanes, restaurants and other ENCLOSED public places. Being a non-smoker, albeit a person who is, ahem, sympathetic to smoker's interests, I can understand the rationale behind that.

But when we are in the great outdoors, your smoke is not going to have any effect on my health unless you are standing within an inch of my face and we stay that way for about 40 years. It just isn't. Most smokers -- indeed, EVERY smoker that I've ever met -- will bend over backwards to be polite, especially if they get any inkling that you don't want to be around their smoke, making the likelihood of a shared outdoor exhale almost non-existent.

So we are not talking public health here. We are talking about lawmakers who simply don't want to SEE people smoking anymore in public.

Memo to the World, Number Two, on smoking

Memo to the World, Number Two:

The next time that you are out and about and you happen to meet someone who is enjoying a cigarette, try something that goes against the prevailing wisdom. Don’t hold your breath and hurry by. Don’t make funny noises or wave your hand as if invisible mosquitoes are swarming around you.

Smile. Stop a moment. Exchange pleasant greetings. Linger for a moment, if the vibes are right. Be nice. Having been conditioned to think that smokers are subhuman, you will probably be surprised to find that you are slipping easily into conversation with someone who is quite intelligent and friendly. The endorphins generated from making a new friend will add much more to your life than a little smoke supposedly ever takes away.

Smokers, male and Female, have been my best friends, all my life, and I haven’t necessarily planned it that way. From lovely Darlene, mentioned here before, to a certain sweet man who taught me so much about photography and another male friend who has now moved to another state but was as gentle and kind a person as one could ever meet – to the many sweet Ladies on this blog who also enjoy the company of Lady Nicotinia …

… and I must tell you about the man who played Santa Claus.

He was first my Boy Scout “master” –- that’s what they call the long-suffering adults who are in charge of a Boy Scout troop. I don’t know if he was paid for his labors – if he was, it couldn’t have been enough.

He played Santa Claus one year at some Boy Scout get-together and I noticed him slip outside to smoke a cigarette. Some uptight person also noticed and made a rude comment that I’m sure he heard and I’m sure hurt deeply. Something about the inappropriateness of Santa smoking. Guess they never read the Night Before Christmas.

He passed away not much later – a few years, if I remember right, of a sudden heart attack. Maybe smoking contributed, or his slight weight problem, or years of stress as a military man, or perhaps his age – he was white-haired, although I never knew how old he was. I was very young myself but I went to his funeral and I said good things about him, because even then I recognized what makes a man great.

I will hold smoking against no man or Woman. If it is a good cigar or a pipe, I will savor the scent of it even if you are a fellow man. If You are a Lady, well, You can smoke anything slightly less pungent than a burning vacuum cleaner belt and I will fall over myself not to offend or disturb You.

If the day comes that you decide to quit, I will be right there to cheer you on as well.

Dedicated to the memory of D.F., a great man.

Second photo printed by permission of: IDRC CRDI, Photographer: N. Kumar

Insane

Warning: Capnolagnia content follows

The last blog on my to-read list this morning consisted of an angry protest about sitting down in the park and having two Women proceed to sit next to this person and light up cigarettes.

Oh, the blogger was mad, mad, mad! How dare they, how come this always happens? She wrote, and Her readers concurred and commiserated.

What a strange world we live in. She curses what I crave. She experiences, and hates, what I long for, and never obtain.

I'm a reasonably well-traveled, non-threatening looking guy. Yet it's been at least a decade or more since any Woman ever sat down near me and lit up a cigarette -- it just doesn't happen. I go every possible place they do with the exception of bars, not being a drinker.

Dear Blogger, I'd trade with You, if only it were possible. We'd both be thrilled.

Only twice in my life do I remember such a blissful moment -- and both were prematurely interrupted. I was a teenager signing up for the military in a Seattle office building, about 1989. I sat down on a bench in the lobby and a lovely brunette sat beside me and took out a cigarette.

My mother had driven me to the place and, being unaware of my odd desire -- She certainly wouldn't have approved anyway -- chose that moment to return from the restroom or wherever She was in the building and take us home.

A few years later, another brunette, dressed in lovely white, sat Herself beside me at the ferry terminal. Again, scarce had Her cigarette left its pack when my grandfather appeared, for I had called to let him know of my arrival and need for a ride home.

Doubt he would have understood if I had said, "Uh, Gramps, can you wait about five minutes until I indulge this absolute moment of ecstasy and the Lady here finishes Her cigarette?"

So, cursing myself by all the epithets I could muster for having made the phone call when I did -- why hadn't I waited just a few damn minutes? -- I followed him to his car and out of the Garden of Eden with the Forbidden Fruit utterly untasted.

So unfair. Life is so very unfair.

On Her Break

She stood up, brushing the dust from her derriere, stretching slightly, perhaps to relieve the stiffness from sitting a while on bare concrete. She put her cigarette to her lips for one last, intense drag, drinking in a final draught of smoky pleasure.

Ah, what the anti-smoking commercials fail to understand! They show somebody running around licking a trash can lid and a fly swatter and they ask, “Can anyone tell us why smoking isn’t stupid” – making a read-between-the-lines comparison between the two.

I ask, “Can anyone tell us why eating a jelly donut isn’t stupid? Riding a motorcycle? Having sex?”

Nobody, unless they are utterly insane, gets any pleasure from licking a trash can lid.

As she inhaled, the young clerk-on-break that I saw outside Such and Such Large Department Store was quietly invoking Goddess Nicotine to grant her bodily ecstasy – fleeting, of course, but ecstasy none-the-less.

She exhaled. I was happily downwind and I inhaled. For a second or two, I shared the sweet smoky breath of this beautiful stranger, the evanescent mist that had danced upon her tongue and explored the depths of her lungs, that had set her heart to racing and soothed her pleasure centers like a subtle lover.

She stubbed out her cigarette into the cluttered ashcan in front of the store. Wrong, all wrong. Fair maidens should have their own, exclusive, worthy public receptacle to dispose of their spent cigarettes. Not some glorified trashcan crowded with the wet cigar butts of old men and other unappealing detritus.

She went back to work. All good things must end.

A dancer in the night

She was tall, lithe and beautiful, with dark hair cascading down her back. She wore a long skirt and glossy pumps – the epitome of elegance, so rare in today’s sweatpants and sneakers world.

She stepped out into the warm, humid East Coast night, walking lightly, gracefully.

I had been heading back inside, knowing that I would pay the price for lingering out here with pollen rampant in the air. But the sight of her stopped me immediately. Allergies be damned!

She was a dance teacher – I recognized her from the first half of the program, a nightmarishly long children’s dance recital which I had consented to attend for the sake of a young participant in my family.

She lit a long white cigarette and exhaled into the breeze. Just three intense drags, then she stepped off the sidewalk and dropped the partially smoked cigarette into the dust and stepped on it. Firmly. Decisively. No ember would survive the determined press of her dancer’s sole. Again, a gesture from days of yore – today, smokers are almost 100 percent “flickers” in an everlasting hurry. Perhaps to escape the health freaks who are omnipresent and condemnatory anytime a telltale wisp of smoke is seen anywhere.

I wondered if she did thus simply because the recital was being held at a high school, where the sight of burning butts upon the sidewalk might have brought opprobrium upon the dance group. I hope not.

She danced beautifully, when her turn came on stage, in between the cute but awkward performances of the children.

I saw no antismoke bigots that night, the kind of people that have cropped up like crabgrass in this new century, who like to go around giving smokers dirty looks or even telling them – perfect strangers -- to quit. I saw no one deprecating this dancer for her indulgence.

And I’m glad. Truth be told, a woman who keeps her body in the state of fitness required to be a dancer, and who loves the genre enough to teach it to children, and a woman who takes pleasure in the simple art of dressing up now and then, will surely live longer and better than the majority of the unpleasant, boorish busybodies who point fingers at her smoking but haven’t gotten a moment of exercise since they sat on a swing in second grade, and who couldn’t tell a dress from a dirigible.

Strange photo of the day

http://www.jocohealth.net/index.asp?DisplayPageID=110

Yet another dreary site detailing the supposed horrors of environmental tobacco smoke.

Yes, I know that if you are a waiter/waitress working daily in a bar so thick with smoke that you need night vision goggles to see across the floor, you could have problems after a while. But then again, people have bitten the dust drinking too much water. Stop sipping while you still have time!

But if ETS was such a horrific and potent killer, if it was really the twin brother to sarin gas or cyanide, it seems like most of the developed world, which was a smoker's paradise until about 20 years ago would be a ghost town by now, littered with the corpses of pedestrians felled by a passing whiff.

But I thought this site was interesting just for its choice of graphics and lead.

"She may look trendy in her little black dress but there's nothing "in style" about her cigarette smoke."

Folks, we have a scheming killer on the loose at this hypothetical party. In her trendy little black dress, gun -- er, cigarette holder -- in hand, she walzes around maniacally laying waste to anyone foolish enough to catch even a wisp of her secondhand death-fumes. You might knock .0000000001 percent of a second off your life if you dare step within breathing range. Better to hiss and spurn her, that beautiful she-beast with the deadly habit.

Ick, what a way to think and live.

She was here (a short story)

Here she was.

I never saw her, but I know.

I stand inside the bus shelter and read the graffiti on its plexiglass walls and wonder about her.

Was she a kindly granny or a hard-faced business-woman? Was she a bubbly teenager or a tired mother with a child in a stroller?

All I know is that she was here.

The plastic seat is still warm where she so recently sat, maybe impressing the faint softness of a skirt or the tough shove of denim jeans.

She was here, for the fresh fragrance of her cigarette still perfumes the air. The wind has not yet scattered the ashes she tapped from it – soft and frail and fleeting upon the concrete. And in the midst of them, crushed out, stepped on, left behind, lies her cigarette, a half-smoked Virginia Slims with a faint, feminine crescent of lipgloss upon the filter.

Here she was, alone or in a crowd, here she sipped sweet smoke and breathed it out again into the morning air – comforting ceremony now scorned by a cowardly new world. I’ve seen the looks the smokers get. I’ve heard the rude and stupid words.

She never knew me nor I her. Had I been here, had I arrived five, ten minutes ago, I would have smiled at her -- gently, pleasantly, a friendly face, neither cursing nor forbidding her exhalations.

I sit where she sat and watch the breeze carry away the bits of ash and wonder what has gone wrong in our world.

Summer dreamin'

It's Monday. The developed world drives to work. Most of said developed world appears to be on the same freeway as me, driving poorly.

It's March. It's cold. We long for sunshine, blue skies and an escape from this daily grind.

Sunshine is in the car now beside me, with its vanity plate reading chx2obx.

In license-plate speak, that either means, Checks to Outer Banks, meaning that the lovely blonde is still paying the bills for her last vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, USA; or, more likely, Chicks to Outer Banks.

Which would be a wistful/hopeful/delightful statement, along the lines of telling the world that she and her girlfriends know where to go to have summertime fun.

A glamorous, long, all-white cigarette burns in her fingers, a pretty sight indeed, and a little consolation awarded to herself for having faced the Monday blues. For a moment I imagine her taking the exit to Carolina instead of Town X, heading to the beach instead of to work, shedding her office wear for something a lot more comfortable and sandproof, parking her suntan lotion, a cold drink and a pack of her favorite cigarettes in the warm sand, stretching out beneath the sun and wiggling her toes, reading a beach book and looking radiant and lovely.

But she is a Responsible Citizen and takes the Town X exit and I continue down the dreary freeway to my own Responsible Citizen destination.

I'm thankful for Darlene in Chinese

Okay, that headline will make sense if you perservere to the end of the post.

I bought Chinese food for lunch today. And in doing so, wondered again how I might say thank you in Chinese. Finally remembered my inquiry long enough to look it up on the computer. Xie xie. Pronounced like she-she, but with the tongue lower down in the mouth than if a typical American were to speak.

Turns out to also be a venerable Chinese family name, with variations depending on location. Tse in Taiwan, for example.

Which got me thinking about a beautiful angel from long ago in my life, Darlene. Darlene Tsu. I wonder if maybe her last name might have been some form of that same word.

She was a Polynesian-Asian blend of utter loveliness, with a personality to match. And if I hadn't been a scatterbrained, 15 year old, confused idiot boy at the time, I would have dated, married and deified her.

She was the first girl who really paid any attention to me, but I was too immature to respond properly. To this day, I remember seeing her for the first time, leisurely strolling down to my darkened, early-morning bus stop, with the tiny red torchlight of her cigarette glowing in her hand.

Oh yes, sweet, otherwise innocent Darlene smoked. My fascination for lady smokers had begun long before, but it burst into flame in her glorious presence.

She gave me a ride home, just once, when she became old enough to drive. She offered another but I told you, the 15 year old boy brain has many missing circuits and doesn't always make sense. I worshipped her and would have ridden with her all the way to Alaska in a beat-up Yugo, so I never rode with her again. Go figure.

But on that one ride, ah -- Debbie Gibson on the stereo, warm spring sunshine upon us, life limitless in front of us. And she lit up a cigarette and I rode beside her for twenty blissful minutes or so, bathed in her sweet smoke, breathing it in like the finest perfume, along with the sun-warmed scent of her hair, and making dumb conversation to the best of my pathetic abilities.

It would make perfect sense for her name to mean "thank you." Her presence that year made it worth getting up for high school every morning, even though I was too stupid to capitalize upon it. And by the time I did have a clue, we moved.

Wherever in this world she is today, I hope she got everything she wanted and floats on clouds of bliss.