Heeding the warnings

Driving to the bank this morning after my walk, I pushed the radio buttons and got that monotonous recorded weather channel. Storm warnings. Flooding. But the sun is shining and it's a delightful spring day. Snow. Sleet. Ice. Flooding. Starting tonight. It's already in Indiana. Make appropriate preparations now for those of you in [three] Ohio counties.

I glanced in my rear view mirror and the woman driving the small red Ford truck was puffing away on her cigarette like a hungry baby at the breast. I'd just cleaned my back window on the van and I could see her pasty, pale skin, wrinkles and slack skinned face--puff, puff. Her male passenger looked worse--he was obese, with jowls hanging over his coat collar, and even more pale. In Ohio, we know what pale in March means--it's been a long, dark winter. But these folks were sickly pale, not Ohio-winter-pale. Cigarette, oxygen deprived pale. She's read the warnings; she's heard the warnings; at least one loved one, and maybe 20, have told her to quit. She's looked in the mirror and it's told her to quit. She knows the only cigarette that works is the first one--the rest are just habit.

Heeding warnings. Flooding or smoking. Who listens? "It will never happen to me" plays much louder.