"On Fire"

It is rather disconcerting to smell yourself catching on fire...and I don't mean in the bedroom.  I have an old coat I bought from Sears about a hundred years ago.  It is big and comfy, and almost warm.  It is the color and texture of oatmeal on the outside, and has seen me through numerous weight gains and weight losses through the years.  Now, I use it exclusively as my smoking coat. 

Two holes were burned into the same cuff...until tonight.  I smelled that acrid odor that told me the wind had blown yet another hot cherry down my sleeve.  Sure enough, out it dropped onto the snow-covered patio, leaving a third crispy-edged stinky hole in the same cuff. 

So far, I've been lucky that the coat has incurred all the damage, and not my clothes or my flesh!  Imagine the headlines:  Woman Burned Alive In Her Smoking Coat Because She Was Dying For A Cigarette.  Gawd, how people would talk...or laugh.