No Spinning Wheels of Life Allowed Within 25 Feet

[from 2/24/10]

They're already starting with April Fools jokes in February this year! Seattle's parks superintendent says that on April 1st it will be illegal to use tobacco within 25 feet of any other person in a Seattle park. Brilliant!

Details of the law, being created, recreated, revoked and decreed by Gallagher (not that Gallagher), Seattle's Legislator of Parks, are currently baroque, and should be rococo by the time everyone gets the gag.

Especially funny is the idea that the law would protect Seattle's children from seeing people use tobacco products -- but only in parks! That's the only place children exist! You'd think downtown parks would be exempt on account of that.

I think there should be a law against joggers wearing spandex at Green Lake. Not for the children, for me.

When I was growing up, we children were protected from bad adult behavior by being issued blindfolds, told to shut up and not repeat anything we overheard, particularly words starting with "a", "c", "f", or "sh". We were told that we couldn't complain about cigarette smoke because hot smoke rises, and we were low to the ground. As I got older and taller, I learned to duck as I walked through the living room, to keep my nose and eyes out of the smoke-o-sphere. Eventually, I had to crawl on my hands and knees. It built character and the kind of humility you need to cope with modern life in a police state, and prepared me for years of hunting for butts and spare change. So turns the spinning wheel of life.

I love these 25 foot rules. What an idea. Nobody carries a 25 foot measuring tape around with them, least of all the police. But that's OK, because for these kind of rules, we're just making excuses for people to be barred from parks. So who cares? And besides, if a policeman who thinks 3 inches is 6 says you're within 25 feet of Bobby, you're probably closer than that.

Since you won't be allowed to smoke or chew within 25 feet of anyone else in the park, all the police will have to do to get you to either stop using or leave the park is to gradually approach you. "I'm 30 feet away, now! Better get moving! I'm 27 feet away, now! I take one more big step, and you're busted!"

Speaking of gradual approaches, Parks Superintendent Gallagher says that a gradual approach to a tobacco ban is reasonable, after having before said it wasn't, and also adds that the new law is that gradual reasonable approach. So it will be 25 feet on April 1, 24 feet April 2, 23 feet April 3, etc. By May 1st, possession of an ounce or more of tobacco in a park will be a misdemeanor. And so on, until, by April 1st, 2011, possession of a single half smoked cigarette, even one of those weird clove things, will be an excuse to shoot you on sight.

The important thing isn't the details of the joke, it's the message being sent. Look, they're saying, we know there's thousands of malnourished homeless people walking the streets, who are smoking cheap rollies just because they subdue appetite and anxiety better and more cost effectively than food. If we can do something as simple as this to make their lives more miserable than they already are, and maybe even get them a longer record, and bar them from some or all of Seattle parks, then, hey, why not?

Things to look for if the law is ever really enforced: Disreputable looking men smoking out of paper bags. Teenagers wearing hoods backwards, so you can't see them chew. When challenged they'll produce bags of baby spinach. People standing 18 inches outside of a park, deliberately fanning their smoke toward it, laughing. Dogs at dog parks wearing doggy T-shirts with packs of Camels tucked under the arms. "Not my Camels, officer. I've never met this dog in my life."