I have a confession to make. About once a month I sneak away from the office to play a round of disc golf. Some people call it frisbee golf, but to those of us who play it seriously, it's disc golf. Anyway, if it's a nice morning, I'll head to a nearby park to play a round of eighteen. You see, as a writer, I often need to brainstorm topics to write about. What has become a tradition for me is to play a round of golf and in the course of playing, figure out and sort out some ideas. Getting away from the office into the great wide open gives me the chance to open up my mind and (hopefully) come up with something good to write about.

Recently the idea was right at my feet.

I have a bone to pick. Every hole on the course has a tee box that is littered with cigarette butts. You'd think that a public park, of all places, would be free of litter. However, for some reason some people don't perceive cigarette butts as litter. I've never understood why that's the case.

Many smokers flick their butts out of cars, squash them on sidewalks, dispose of them among the pine trees in public parks, etc. Most of these same people, though, wouldn't think of tossing a drink can out of a car or smashing one on a sidewalk. In the case of disc golf, I doubt that many of the butt disposers would discard an empty can at the tee of the third hole, especially since there is a trash can right there (and recycle bins in different parts of the park, too)! But for some unknown reason, the squashed butts don't seem to make it to those trash cans. What people may not realize is that cigarettes don't biodegrade quickly. The filters on the end of cigarettes take a long time to be absorbed by Nature.

Similarly, I don't think that any of Nature's family puts the butts to use in the "Circle of Life." Ants with their Herculean strength don?t carry them back to their colonies. Birds don?t pad their nests with filters. And squirrels don?t bury them to store for the cold winter months. Instead, animals ignore them.

It seems like we people ignore them too. Imagine if cigarette butts were bright pink instead of white. Do you think we'd tolerate tons of pink garbage on our roads, on our sidewalks, and in our parks? I don't think so. Not only would pink cigarette butts literally stick out on a sidewalk, they would also stick out in most people's minds as litter. Because there isn't the perception that they're pollution, white cigarette butts go unnoticed for the most part. We ignore them because we don't see them. Once you notice them, however, it seems as if they are everywhere. To me, white butts may not butt into my field of vision as much as pink butts would, but they still scar the landscape. Hopefully you share that opinion. Something must be done, however, to help others see cigarette butts as pollution.

I remember when I was a little kid there was a commercial that showed an elderly Native American on a horse looking down into a valley polluted with all kinds of garbage. Then the camera cut to a close-up of the old man to show a tear slowly roll down his face. Talk about guilt! Talk about shame! Even though I never littered, I still felt guilty for what everyone had done to spoil the land. I don't know how anyone who saw that commercial could have even considered polluting.

Maybe a plan to decrease the butts should put guilt and shame to use. My apologies to Hester Prynne (the protagonist in The Scarlet Letter who is shamed and humiliated in hopes of teaching her and others a lesson), but sometimes guilt and shame can be a good thing. Cigarette smokers have come under fire for secondhand smoke in public places. Guilt over the health hazards and the discomfort to others worked, in part, to convince smokers to be considerate of non-smokers. Many of the laws regarding smoking in public places have been enacted in the last decade or so.

Similarly, public pressure on cigarette companies compelled them to admit to the addictive nature of cigarettes. With that public pressure and shame building, the tobacco companies negotiated a deal with many states to pay a hefty penalty with part of the money to be used for youth anti-smoking campaigns. A lot has happened lately on the smoking side, so maybe now something will happen on the disposing side of things. I don't think we need any government action to take a bite out of the butts we see in public places. Instead, we need awareness. We need to be aware that cigarette butts are litter - pollution - a blight on our landscape.

Maybe a sprinkle of guilt and shame will also help bring about a change in butt perceptions. Those who flick and squash their butts in an improper place should at least feel guilty about it. How we accomplish that depends on the people involved. Perhaps it'll take a tear, or it might even require an elderly Native American.

Who knows - maybe next time I sneak away from the office to play disc golf, the squirrels and I won't have to wonder what the park would look like without the butt factor.