Things Which Only Happen To Me?

I Believe The List Is Long And Wide...


First of all, those that know me know that I never smoked cigarettes.

In the past ten or so years I've picked up an appreciation for good yet mild cigars. I pride myself in finding the decent $3 to $5 kind you buy in bundles of seconds, with the occasional $10 Davidoff and a couple of fake overpriced Cubans (Cigars, not females) thrown in for my disappointment through the ensuing years.

What freaked me out when I got started was how many "Fru-Fru" glitzy restaurants here in the south (Atlanta, Charlotte, Greenville, etc.) would have a "Cigar" list or a Humidor being carried around by the "cigar Chick" but as you were paying for or taking possession of your prize (putting it in your mouth and asking for a cutter and a light) you'd be told that you couldn't actually SMOKE your overpriced stale Cigar INSIDE the restaurant full of cigarette puffing ingrates.

"People object...", so there I'd stand sweating on the patio fighting the bugs or waiting until I had gotten home and the urge had left me.

Something like that would never happen in Chicago or Pittsburgh--at least until the do-gooder busy bodies and the politicians passed the omnipresent "public smoking laws."

On to my point, I was in Hollywood Florida buying a boat back about 2001 (again before the Florida public smoking ban) and I had purchased a couple of really nice Cigars from a local store there on the downtown strip, then wandered on down the street and walked into a night club which had a bar just inside the front door. I always tried to minimize my impact on the indoor air quality even though smoking of things larger in diameter than a pencil, flavored with artificial carcinogens, was allowed.

I asked the bartender if Cigars were OK before I ordered my wine, and not thirty seconds after I had finished biting off the tip and firing up a gaggle of thirty something self important Yankee Hags sporting "f**k me pumps" and spangled black dresses walked in and made a bee-line to a spot beside me at the bar after scoping out the room.

Two or three of them came in the door with lit cigarettes in their hands.

After two or three puffs into my masterpiece, one of the "ladies" taps--or rather pokes--me on the shoulder and matter of factly asks me to put my Cigar out because "Cigars stink..."

I complied as I apologized for my obvious inconsideration of my position in the food chain and the South Florida social structure. I broke the wrapper while extinguishing it because I didn't have a cutter with me and was forced to grind it in the ash tray to extinguish it.

$15 down the gutter, so you could understand that I was ready to tackle the "lady" from behind when not two minutes later she and her party completed their drink orders and the touch up of their hair and makeup, then sauntered off into the dance floor area to continue their evening.

Is it just me?