Don’t Show Your Butts in Public

Now that I have your attention, I want to talk about something that needs to be addressed, particularly as the weather warms. No, I am not talking about walking or running, bicycling or even driving around our historic neighborhood in short shorts. What I am talking about is something that many of us in the neighborhood carry around and too often leave behind, something that as spring unfolds, and yard and neighborhood clean ups begin are as difficult to get rid of as the prostitutes hanging around our local corner convenience store. What I am talking about are cigarette butts.

I am not a smoker and this is not intended to be an attack on smokers. But I do walk around the neighborhood on a fairly regular basis and I have made a modest contribution to the neighborhood clear ups of the past. In my walking, for both my own exercise and in an effort to help clean up, I have noticed a preponderance of cigarette butts, along the sides of the streets, on the sidewalks, and even in yards – including my own. In fact, one time when I was walking, I counted the number of butts in a ten-foot stretch and reached a total of 46.

If anybody has ever tried picking up cigarette butts, especially ones that have been out in the rain (and we’ve had plenty of that lately), then you know what a stinky (because damp cigarette butts do stink) and tedious task it is. While small in size they are insidious in effect. Once smoked and then tossed aside, cigarette butts take on smoldering nefarious lives of their own. Inconspicuous in the singular form, they soon gather together. They huddle against the curbs, skulk among the grass and blooming flowers, and parade along the sidewalks, achieving ugly, endless, icky aggregations. In large enough clumps they even begin to bear uncanny resemblances to the more delinquent homes in our neighborhood.

As I said, this is not an assault on smokers, nor do I have any particular smoker or smokers in mind. All I know is what I see as I walk around our historic neighborhood and what I pick up with my fingers. I do not know whose lips have caressed these filter tips and whose fingers have held these remnants of menthol and plain tobacco leaves, but I do know that with your help I may no longer have to wonder who’s been showing his or her butts in public.

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