How cold was it? It was so cold that words were freezing in the air before they reached the ear of the listener. Outdoor conversations went unfinished as nouns and verbs fell cracked and ice-covered onto frozen streets. There are going to be a lot of words to clean up come spring, and who the hell is in charge of that?

Television news reporters opened their mouths to give live reports on the cold and then froze in that position. Skinny people were rubbing their limbs together to stay warm. Crack dealers were trading rock for firewood. Bars began selling shots of antifreeze instead of whiskey. Schoolgirls were growing beards overnight. For the first time in recorded history, water temperature below the ice on Lake Auburn was as cold and dark as an editor’s heart.

And so on, and so forth. We’re talking cold. We’re talking single-digit temperatures and wind that hacks your skin into deli-thin slices. We’re talking pain and discomfort. We’re talking conditions only a fool would wander into with inappropriate clothing.

I spotted the first fool outside a downtown store. He was wearing shorts and a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. It looked like he might have been on his way to a gym, but he wasn’t. He was buying a 12-pack of beer. I imagined him taking a drink from a cold, cold can and watching it freeze to his mouth.

“Hempme! Hempme! Nacan ith thtuck do my lipth!”

There was another fool cruising a few blocks away with the window of his car rolled all the way down. Powerfully loud music pounded from inside. The fool’s head was bobbing back and forth to the beat and I swear, his lips were blue. This guy so wanted to share his music with the rest of the world, he was perfectly willing to endure frostbite to get it done.

More foolish are the smokers. We brave cold all the time, not to mention various other forms of climatic unpleasantness. Should the sky rain nails one day, we’ll be out there looking like pin cushions as we suck on our nasty cigs. We’ll dance around trying to avoid the next spike while huffily defending our habits.

“Remember back in the day when you could smoke … ouch … just about anywhere? These days, you’d think we’re … ouch… smoking dead puppies, the way we’re treated.”

Strangers sitting in warm cars stare at us with a look that is 25 percent pity, 25 percent disgust and 50 percent amusement. They look at us as though we are relics from a forgotten time, like creatures in a museum.

“So lacking in intelligence was the smokarian carcinogus ignoramus,” they tell their fascinated children, “that they would pay $5 a pack, endure scorn and ostracism, and then risk cold, heat, rain, snow and even raining nails to indulge in a habit that made them stinky and shunned. The smokarian was mostly a source of entertainment for more evolved species.”

Other strangers shuffle past us, bundled up in nine layers of clothing, and look at us as though we are feebleminded children who need guidance.

“Too cold to smoke,” they might say. Or: “You know that’s bad for you, right?”

Frostbitten, surly and unable to get our lighters working, we typically respond to such lofty, public-service announcements with streams of profanity. Protected by the heat of our smoke, the filthy words manage to cross the air without freezing and land in the ears of the surgeon general wannabe. He picks up his pace and vows never to help such vile degenerates again.

When we smokers stand in frigid temperatures, we don’t talk about the discomfort. To do so would be to join the ranks of the meddlers who belittle us. Only secretly do we evaluate our pathetic conditions and vow to quit.

It won’t be the cold that gets us to give up the smokes, though. It won’t be the lectures or the barrage of anti-smoking campaigns. No, we’ll quit because we’re good and ready to quit and it has nothing at all to do with the nails sticking out of our backs.

And then, one day when the worst of the cravings have ended, those with such willpower will sit in warm cars and snicker at the shivering blue smokers. Because part of recovery appears to be a certain smugness and a sense of scorn for those who still huddle over cigarettes in the numbing frost. It’s a right former smokers earn by coming in from the cold.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. Visit his blog at www.sunjournal.com.