Storified by Beregond · Tue, Jan 01 2013 01:37:59
My last day of 2012. I'm in Montrose having breakfast for lunch. It's illegal to smoke...
... so rather than getting the friendly owner of Home Bakery in trouble, I step away to a little concrete seating area across the sidewalk.
I'm enjoying my cigarette when a stunted, scrunched brownette sweeping the doorway of her shop steps up to me and says...
"Excuse me, but you aren't supposed to smoke here."
Her tone is brittle--a micron-thick veneer of civility stretched over a throbbing tumor of pure toxic loathing.
Not for my benefit, mind you, but so she could later tell her vile "friends" that she'd been exceedingly cordial.
I looked at her and replied, "Uh-huh. Thanks." She stood there glaring at me in quivering silence as I continued smoking.
Finally, the mask of civility crumbles and she spits, "Are you going to put that out?"
This time, I don't even look at her. "Nope," I say. "Then I'm going to call the police!" she says.
"You go ahead and do that," I said affably.
She retreated to the awning over the entry of her "shoppe," an establishment that apparently specializes in lace and calico gee-gaws...
... treacly potpourri, hand-made soap, crudely jig-sawed cows and "such."
So palpable were the waves of pure, white-hot moral rage emanating from her...
... that I'm certain that, if she'd been in possession of a firearm and were it legal, she would have happily blown my brains out.
Just to teach me a lesson.
After a while, I turned and looked at her as if surprised to see she was still there.
"Well?" I said, calmly, "Aren't you going to call the police? Have me arrested?"
"Right. And you'll just put it out and litter the sidewalk with it," she said, "What good would that do? It's filthy!"
I smiled, finished the cigarette and scraped the cherry off on the edge of the bench. Pinching the tip to assure it was out...
... I stood, dropped it in the litter-box and walked away. "You make me sick!" she cawed, adding with dripping sarcasm, "Happy New Year!"
