TexanAvenger

You just freakin' made my day. Maybe a day and half.

Seriously though, I don't consider myself a particularly good person. Sure, I've done pretty good things and try to be a fairly nice person, but on the whole I think I fall somewhere between "okay" and "shady."

But I, like a lot of smokers, smoke downwind of the non-smokers or otherwise try to keep it away from them. We're humans too, and don't like to cause discomfort to those around us. Sticking a cylindrical tube in your mouth and lighting it doesn't make you suddenly callous and unfeeling. Or rather, it does it to your lungs, not your compassion.

I know cigarette smoke is bad for you, and so try to not wrap its smoky tendrils around the "innocent." Anybody that tells you otherwise is ignorant of current health topics. Hell, I told off a woman this weekend who was complaining vociferously about somebody telling her to try and keep the smoke out of their face because they felt it was bad for them. I've no doubt that in spite of that, she's going to remain an asshole. The rest of us smokers that aren't like that hate those people too, for the record.

But for you to pose a divide between being a smoker and being a good person is not only ridiculous, it's offensive. We smoke in public because we're people and public is where people go. Most of us try to keep it away from non-smokers because we're aware that you don't like it. We're not a different breed of unhealthy, callous, angry, unfeeling mutants. Most of us aren't trying to play the social pariah, we just don't want to be labelled as outright "bad people."