Holier Than Thou, Austin Style

This is an open letter to the blonde-haired guy in the black GMC midsize pickup truck I “met” at the intersection of Airport and I-35 on the afternoon of October third.

I am one of the unclean, a tobacco smoker. Since I have kids at home and can’t smoke in the office or any other public place, I smoke mostly in my car. Typically I roll my own cigarettes with American Spirit tobacco. They have no filters, and the paper is made from 100% flax. Since these hand-rolled cigarettes are all-natural and essentially pre-biodegraded containing nothing but leaf material and a spot of flax paper which disolves in water, sometimes I will drop my “butts” out of my car window into the gutter if I’m stopped at a traffic light or stop sign. Most of the time I do this my cigarette is no longer burning since natural tobacco doesn’t contain chemicals to keep it lit like manufactured cigarettes do. Now I know this is a bad habit and constitutes illegal littering in spite of my rationalizations about the fact that my litter dissolves into a tiny amount of 100% plant detritus upon first contact with water. Mea culpa: It is still wrong for me to litter, regardless.

On October third I was running late for an after-school event at my children’s elementary school for which I volunteer on a weekly basis. Instead of trying to roll a cigarette while I was driving, I noticed my wife had left a pack of her store-bought cigarettes in my car, so I lit up one of those instead. While stopped under the I-35 overpass at Airport Blvd. waiting to make a left-hand turn, I thoughtlessly dropped my cigarette butt into the gutter. Realizing I had just dropped a fiberglass filtered cigarette butt instead of one of my hand-rolled butts, I glanced up at the light and debated whether I should get out of my car and pick it up. But before I could decide, I saw something move right outside my car window out of the corner of my eye. Thinking it might be a panhandler, I bent my head down to look up at him when something burning came flying through the window and hit me in the face. Upon impact, it burst into multiple burning pieces. One burning piece went into my left eye, one piece fell onto my forearm and stuck, while the rest of the pieces fell between my legs onto my car seat and between my car door and the drivers seat. Panicked, I looked around to see where my attacker was and saw the man behind me calmly get back into his truck. It was then that I realized what was happening, that he had seen me drop a cigarette butt, got out of his truck, bent over next to my car, picked it up, and threw it in my face. By this time the light had changed and the car in front of me was moving. In shock and unsure if the passenger compartment of my car was on fire or not, I made the left turn. I pulled into a parking lot and checked my car to make sure nothing was burning. The man behind me went on about his way. He never uttered a word.

Now I’m sure this man is very satisfied with himself, and I’m sure he enjoyed the self-righteous rush he got from demonstrating his moral righteousness—with fire!—to a filthy, littering smoker. And I’m sure that there are people reading this post feeling smug in their pious certitude that I got what I deserved. But the truth of the matter is this man physically assaulted and injured me, a total stranger. Although I don’t smoke with my children in the car, had they been in there with me they might have gotten injured too. If I had been wearing a rayon or acrylic shirt, I could be in Brackenridge right now with third degree burns on fifty percent of my body. My car could have caught on fire and I might have burned to death, tangled up in my seat belt. Or, in my panic, I might have accidentally hit my accelerator and slammed into the car in front of me, harming that driver and her child. I’m left wondering how any of these potential outcomes would have affected this man’s moral calculus, but it’s clear that the only factor was himself and his egotistical sense of rectitude. If he had just picked up the butt and said “excuse me sir, I think you dropped this” I would have been properly chastised and he would have made his point. But apparently that wasn’t enough for him.

Anyway, whoever you are Mr. “Activist,” my eye’s okay, and the blisters on my forearm and face are small and will heal soon enough. I still hope you one day develop the moral cognition necessary to understand that while my littering may have been anti-social, what you did was thuggish and sociopathic, and God forbid you seriously harm someone before you figure out what a creep you are.