Put Your Butt Where It Belongs! (Please)

I posted something on Twitter today that got quite a bit of feedback and seemed to evoke some emotion & frustration in people - which is what made me post it in the first place. What I said was, "I am fed up w/ppl flicking their cigarette butts out their window. If u need an ashtray, I'll buy u 1!" Let me give you some history on how bad this has been burning my butt (pun intended) for quite awhile now.

Several years ago while I was still living in Wichita, we were on a "Burn Ban". It was such a hot, dry summer that they basically said, "Unless you have permission from the Fire Department, you can't burn anything!" Period. Meanwhile wildfires were breaking out all over California, burning entire zip codes to the ground. One day that summer I was on my way home from work. It was probably 100 degrees easy. I pulled up to a stop light and the gentleman in front of me - older, and obviously headed home from a rough afternoon of playing golf - had finished his cigarette and decided to launch it out his window...straight toward the grass-covered median. I was furious! I put my Jeep in park, got out, and walked up beside his car and stomped out his cigarette. He sat there paralyzed - in disbelief. When I got back in my Jeep I could see his eyes staring into his rearview mirror, probably wondering, "What in the heck just happened?" This was the day I finally decided that I'd had enough of this.

Ever since that experience - one that I'm not incredibly proud of by the way - it seems that every smoker on the planet who chooses to do this winds up driving right in front of me. I even had a woman launch one out her window and it landed on the hood of my Jeep. Insane! I'm like a cigarette butt tractor beam!

I guess I've been trying to figure out WHY this chaps me so bad. Is it the vivid memory I have of my grandmother being able to fill her ashtray in her Cadillac to the point it looked like Mount Vesuvius? I figure, if she could use her ashtray so effectively in 1979, why can't you do it now, 30 years later! Or maybe it's that we're living in a world where we're being bombarded by "Clean up the environment" messages and all the while people are doing something this juvenile, ridiculous, and irresponsible...and no one seems to be yelling and screaming about it. Just the crazy pastor in the Jeep!

So, to you Mr. or Miss Smoker, keep your butt to yourself! After you're done sucking on your butt, dispose of it properly. Your butt belongs in an ashtray! We don't want to see your butt - especially laying on the curb still smoking! [OK - enough butt jokes.] In all seriousness, is there a reason for this? Is it just laziness? Did they stop putting ashtrays in cars? If they did, my offer still stands. I'll buy you one!

Does this drive you crazy like it does me? If not, what does?