Some people do things that still astonish me even after I’ve seen them a hundred times.

An Olympic gymnast springing far too high into the air and doing what appears far too many flips before touching down.  Or the way my wife can type speedily into Excel and the program actually knows what to do with the formula.  And honestly, pretty much anyone who plays the piano well—I mean, come on, it’s like they have control over all ten fingers at the same time!

There is another act that never ceases to amaze me.  It’s when I see people throw burning cigarettes out their car windows.

Cigarette litter harms our world in countless ways.  You can think of those butts like tiny, poisonous warheads known to cause death and billions of dollars in damage through wildfire.

I see red.

Not just the embers spraying from the lit end of the cigarette, but eyes-narrowed, jaw clamped down kind of red.  The head-shaking anger of a person fighting the urge to react in an extreme way.  Tamping down the growing need to Hulk-out in traffic.  Struggling against the desire to roll my own window down and scream at the top of my lungs, “That’s littering!”

I don’t always win that last fight either, I tell you what.

As a kid I played a videogame called Spy Hunter.  I cruised around in a sleek, black sports car souped-up with machine guns, missiles, and an oil slick maker.  I no longer remember what my mission was, but I do remember taking out enemies ahead of me on the freeway with my heavy firepower.

This same image flashes across my brain when I see someone toss their cigarette out the window.

Some people are brash.  Seventy miles an hour on the freeway at night.  An orange flare flicks out the driver side window, tumbles, and sends up fireworks off the roadway.  I startle at the brightness in the black of open road until I realize what I’m seeing.  And then…

I am Spy Hunter.  Missiles locked on target.

Other reprobates are sneaky.  At a stoplight they dangle an arm out, lower their hand along the door, and gently drop the cigarette still smoldering to the asphalt, real smooth like.

I saw that!

You’re not as sly as you think and it’s still littering.

I am now my very own version of the Michael Douglas character in “Falling Down” who snaps and begins standing up against daily injustice.  The aspirational me steps out of my car, approaches the open window, and chucks the smoking butt back in.

The audacity.

(Theirs, not mine.  After all, I’m only imagining doing something inappropriate; they’re actually doing it).  How does someone get this way?

I’m sure this is a way bigger deal to me than to most people, but I can live with that. In the modern classic “Office Space,” someone asks the character named Michael Bolton why he doesn’t just change his name to Mike if he’s tired of people referencing the pop music star by the same name.  His answer: “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.”

Exactly, Michael.

Cigarette butts are trash.  They are usually at least a little bit on fire still.  What kind of person thinks it’s okay to chuck litter, burning or not, out a car window?

Did you know cigarettes are the most littered item in America?  They are so prevalent as to be completely commonplace on our sidewalks, hiking trails, and city parks.  Which means they also end up in our waterways and wildlife.

I remember some time in my early teens when one of my best friends decided to try to smoke an old cigarette butt.  Don’t try to make sense of it, I certainly can’t.  He was an experimenter.  My point is, it took him just minutes to find an appropriate specimen along the rural country road near his home.  It didn’t go very well, but it did lead to a smoking habit, so…

Let’s be honest about the practice of smoking.  Whether someone is happy about their smoking or not, it often leads to addiction and everything about addiction says it is hard to kick.  We can divorce the litter issue from smokers in general.  Smokers I know don’t chuck their cigarette refuse or any other debris out the car window.  They’re good citizens.

In fact, there are whole movements out there to curb this habit.  They offer tips on programming around education and prevention.  Several municipalities in Britain have toyed around with the clever and entendre-filled slogan “Don’t be a tosser.”

Even some smokers’ rights groups have joined this push by policing their own, so to speak.  That’s probably key since we’re already addressing a habit people are sensitive about in the first place.

My astonishment will continue when I see things like gymnasts soaring through the air or people who play the piano well.  And each time someone tosses a cigarette butt out the window, I’ll hope a cop also sees it and slaps them with a hefty ticket.

Failing that, I will still channel a vigilante Michael Douglas on his very bad day and dream about flicking that cigarette right back through the window.  Or I will picture myself behind the wheel in Spy Hunter.  Machine guns ready.