"You're like lepars to me" were the first words that my new boss greeted me with after first inquiring as to whether or not I smoked cigarettes. "I'm sorry.?" i asked quite stunned at this out burst of bile. "You, you smokers..." he said simply waving his hand judiciously as if the subject were now closed. "Here's your room" he said showing me into the small room, "you can smoke but i'd rather that you didn't, it would make me happy you know..."
I closed the door, sat down on the old office chair with the stuffing coming out at the broken seams, opened a by now warm can of cider and lit a cigarette.
In the 21st Century the smoker has become an accepted target of random abuse even by strangers. This being caused by the terrible secondary smoke representing an absolutely irresponsible attitude towards ones fellow man (even if they consider you a lepar..) and disregard even for ones own health : all in all filthy ashtrays of people who cough and weeze their way to an early grave.
Ah, and that grotesque pleasure that a non-smoker can take in telling a smoker how they are sure to die early and in great pain... how reassuring, the old electric shock therapy, the unpitying rod to save the child... or else a channel for that frustrated impotency of non-doing.
The sad irony is that many of these anti-smokers do not seem fully happy or self aware unless they are in the actual process of berating a smoker, and will sit moodily sulking while other employees take a cigarette break complaining of how they work an extra five minutes each day... so even their treasured and massively longer life span isn't enough?
Well, I mused to myself as i sat smoking that first cigarette in the beat up old hotel room, I could always comfort myself with the thought that non-smokers die every day...
Sweet dreams.
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