“Please refrain from cigar smoking.”

I was shocked when I first read those words.  It was 1984.  I was working at a chichi restaurant in Westchester County as a busboy, and the manager ordered me – ordered me – to drop tent cards on each table with those five words sprawled across them.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The message was so rude.

This was a fancy joint.  An expensive joint.  With famous people eating there. How could we impose rules on customers?

In the years to come, those tent cards proliferated and abbreviated:  “Please refrain from cigar smoking” became “No cigars please” which became “No cigars” which became “Go screw yourself.”

Today, we read in the New York Post of a lawsuit filed against a cigar smoker at 200 East 79^th Street in Manhattan.  His next-door neighbors are suing him for $2 million for smoking cigars in his own home ($500,000 for every man, woman, and child living in their apartment.)

The bottom line of the lawsuit: Cigars stink.

Well, cigars have always stunk.  They were stinking up the planet a thousand years before Columbus brought them back from the New World to the Spanish Court, where he promptly stunk things up.

Which, let’s face it, has always made cigar smokers a little rude themselves.

But a lawsuit? For being inconsiderate?

As much as I sympathize for the smoked out family on East 79^th Street, I really hope the judge doesn’t ban cigar smoking in one’s own home.  Because if he does, I’ll have to take up the stinky habit. And I hate cigars.