Out the Window

In the Daily Tabouleh, Danny shares a smoking-related thought:

I am still wondering why people throw their cigarettes from their car out the window and not place them in an ashtray. If you are stinking up your car already and you reek of smoke, why are you littering?

Good question, Danny. And there is an answer.

Unfortunately this answer will never satisfy any non-smoker's curiosity.

Before I dig in to this, please note that I consider someone who tries smoking, smokes "socially," or smokes regularly for less than, say, a year a non-smoker, in a polar generalization.

There is one big question, and millions of questions branching and rooting from that trunk.

A non-smoker cannot understand why a smoker exists at all. There is no logical, intelligent reason for anyone to smoke cigarettes, given sufficient information about the product. If the point of smoking itself is senseless, than why bother questioning the logic of any of the user's attendant habits?

I mean, how does a smoker know he has a "cough," as in when one's gets a cold?

Well, guess what? He knows. There are many, minute, physiological changes in the body. Listening to a smoker cough, noone else would know the difference. We (were) always coughing, hacking and hocking every waking moment, as if we were sick anyway. It all sounds the same to those around us. The sick cough and the "smoker's cough" just feels different, and we internally feel and taste the difference. There is a different taste in the throat and mouth, a slightly different muscular pull, a different tickle in a different area of the throat, different phlegm content and consistancy, etc.

Now, the ash tray issue is similar in some regards.

To a non-smoker, cigarette smell is just one, foul smell. Cigarette smoke stinks, and everything exposed to it stinks.

But cigarettes have many smells, that have differing intensities and half-lives (metaphorically speaking). There is the presently burning cigarette smoke itself, billowing out of the lit tip. This will choke anyone, and burn the eyes if it blows in one's face. Then there is the smell of the cigarette smoke indirectly. You smell it, but the actual smoke is not in your face. These scents are the more immediate, pungent smells. These smells diminish in intensity over various lengths of time. You can roll your windows down and 'air out' the car, and these will diminish.

Then there is the smell of the ashes. They have a more stale, stagnant dead smell. This is the smell that stays. If an ash tray is left full, you will continue to smell this. This same smell will be embedded permanently into the upholstery. Long after one quits smoking, and driven thousands of miles with the windows down, it will remain in the upholstery and carpet in the vehicle. Just sit shotgun in my ride and smell for yourself.

I'll cut this short. We're like dogs. Humans think poop stinks. Period. Dogs perceive all kinds of information from a variety of scents it perceives in a piece of doodie in a variety of locations and states of decay.

And I have no problem comparing cigarettes to fecal matter.