From the Department of Lethal Idiocy

At the gas station this morning on my way to work, I saw something I had never actually witnessed before - an unusual thing for me, even in this City of Insanity. As I pumped $60 of my soul into the tank, I saw a woman sitting in her car next to the mini-mart, smoking a freshly-lit cigarette. At the gas station. With the windows down. Right next to a gas pump.

Thinking that, given my schedule, today would be a bad day to be incinerated, I stepped briskly away from my car, running through the mental list of items in my purse that would be lost in the inferno, and slowing my gait only when my summer-movie-trained eye judged that I'd be out of the worst of the inevitable massive fireball.

The woman, who by now had noticed I was staring at her, stared right back at my undoubtedly odd-looking scuttle, then took a deep drag and put the car in gear. With excruciating care, she slowly slowly slowly drove a complete circuit through the station, weaving through ALL of the inflammable pumps to reach her exit, all the while alternating between fixes of nicotine and caffeine.

I wanted desperately to run up to her car, pull the Marlboro out of her mouth, stamp it out, and slap her soundly, but that would have entailed going straight through what absolutely should have been the epicenter of the conflagration, and to be perfectly honest, I'm against self-immolation. The daggers I shot out of my eyes hit their target, but she was totally baffled by them. She probably thought I was yet another self-righteous non-smoker (true) who wanted to tell her how bad cigarettes are (true, but in a non-cancerous way). I have no doubt that the day she actually does cause a station fire, it will catch her completely by surprise, and if she survives, she will probably sue.