Cigarette Bummers
So I was driving home from the gym today. On the way down Milvia Street, a guy smoking a cigarette, pregnant girlfriend/wife trooping behind, restricted my progress and gambled at bit on mid street cross. I at least saw him. I dealt him a hand that kept him and his troops from cashing in everything. When I’d brushed off the various items that the physics of an abrupt motion pause had distributed round the cab of my truck, I noticed the reason for his gamble. A man on the other side of the street had asked to bum a cigarette. The gambler actually had two lit cigarettes. One he gave to the bummer.
I started thinking about this whole cigarette bumming thing that seems to have developed in our society. I mean, it’s always been the case, that smokers bum cigarettes from friends. What the hell right?
When I had my first real paying job, just out of high school, I worked at a gas station. We sold cigarettes. They were 55 cents a pack. I was making minimum wage, $2.90 an hour. It took me about twelve minutes to earn the money for a pack of cigarettes. About 40 seconds of standing pumping gas to earn the money for one cigarette. The comparative economics of cigarettes have changed since then. A pack of cigarettes now costs $5.00. Minimum wage in California is $6.35 an hour. One item doubled in value, the other increased ten times. At that same gas station job today, I’d have to work 47 minutes (58 minutes if you are from a red where Minimum Wage is still $5.15) just to buy a pack of cigarettes and I’d have to fill tanks for two and a half minutes to just get one cigarette. Though to be honest, nowadays, I wouldn’t have that job. Some dude name Amir, or chick name Pratibha does. A&P aren’t pumping gas either. They watch people on video as they pump the gas and actually pay a machine for the privilege of doing my old job. But even as A&P are sitting their in their management position supervising the customers my old job was outsourced too, they they’ve lost economically. They can’t afford cigarettes like I use to too. They have to put some serious gas station, management butt sitting time into just one quick cigarette.
A few years after I went to college, I was working at Lockheed and one of the guys I worked with was talking about how he and his wife were going on a cruise in the fall. I think it was off the coast of Australia or something. It sounded expensive. When I inquired about the cost, he said it was free. He and his wife had quit smoking six months before they paid for the trip with the money they had saved. They both had two pack a day habits. Do the math, it’s twenty bucks a day. In six months a person can afford a pretty good cruise, in a year you can fly first class to the cruise.
--So, back to the cigarette bummer. I like tuning into conversations when someone bums a cigarette. Bumming is a sponge tax on a smoker’s life. Unlike, panhandling that can be sneered at avoid absorption, smokers must give. They give to the State, the Feds and –to each other. If you don’t smoke, you have a bummer excuse. But somehow, somewhere in the dimension where blown concentric rings are “the shit”, there is this hushed law: “If you have an extra cigarette and a fellow person of habit asks you’re obligated risk the precious assets, cross a busy street, and provide the fix.” This observance is casual. I’ve see it in bars. I’ve saw it on the street with my gambler’s actions. Why did the smoker cross the street? He had too. If he didn’t the other smoker would throw a fit. Worse, some day the gambler would need a cigarette and if he didn’t give one up today, he might not be owed one on his day of need. It was a bet on debt.
Now you all may think this is crazy. I don’t know how it got started. But I know if you are still smoking at this point in history one of two things are true. You’ve made some great economic gains in the last twenty five years and can afford to share the wealth, or you are really addicted to nicotine. Cause you wouldn’t use tobacco if you made minimum wage. If you did, you wouldn’t give away the better part of an hours work to total strangers unless you empathized with their bummer of a position.
Well, that’s my big thought for today. I could talk about how many more Americans got killed in Iraq today. But that’s another bummer.
I started thinking about this whole cigarette bumming thing that seems to have developed in our society. I mean, it’s always been the case, that smokers bum cigarettes from friends. What the hell right?
When I had my first real paying job, just out of high school, I worked at a gas station. We sold cigarettes. They were 55 cents a pack. I was making minimum wage, $2.90 an hour. It took me about twelve minutes to earn the money for a pack of cigarettes. About 40 seconds of standing pumping gas to earn the money for one cigarette. The comparative economics of cigarettes have changed since then. A pack of cigarettes now costs $5.00. Minimum wage in California is $6.35 an hour. One item doubled in value, the other increased ten times. At that same gas station job today, I’d have to work 47 minutes (58 minutes if you are from a red where Minimum Wage is still $5.15) just to buy a pack of cigarettes and I’d have to fill tanks for two and a half minutes to just get one cigarette. Though to be honest, nowadays, I wouldn’t have that job. Some dude name Amir, or chick name Pratibha does. A&P aren’t pumping gas either. They watch people on video as they pump the gas and actually pay a machine for the privilege of doing my old job. But even as A&P are sitting their in their management position supervising the customers my old job was outsourced too, they they’ve lost economically. They can’t afford cigarettes like I use to too. They have to put some serious gas station, management butt sitting time into just one quick cigarette.
A few years after I went to college, I was working at Lockheed and one of the guys I worked with was talking about how he and his wife were going on a cruise in the fall. I think it was off the coast of Australia or something. It sounded expensive. When I inquired about the cost, he said it was free. He and his wife had quit smoking six months before they paid for the trip with the money they had saved. They both had two pack a day habits. Do the math, it’s twenty bucks a day. In six months a person can afford a pretty good cruise, in a year you can fly first class to the cruise.
--So, back to the cigarette bummer. I like tuning into conversations when someone bums a cigarette. Bumming is a sponge tax on a smoker’s life. Unlike, panhandling that can be sneered at avoid absorption, smokers must give. They give to the State, the Feds and –to each other. If you don’t smoke, you have a bummer excuse. But somehow, somewhere in the dimension where blown concentric rings are “the shit”, there is this hushed law: “If you have an extra cigarette and a fellow person of habit asks you’re obligated risk the precious assets, cross a busy street, and provide the fix.” This observance is casual. I’ve see it in bars. I’ve saw it on the street with my gambler’s actions. Why did the smoker cross the street? He had too. If he didn’t the other smoker would throw a fit. Worse, some day the gambler would need a cigarette and if he didn’t give one up today, he might not be owed one on his day of need. It was a bet on debt.
Now you all may think this is crazy. I don’t know how it got started. But I know if you are still smoking at this point in history one of two things are true. You’ve made some great economic gains in the last twenty five years and can afford to share the wealth, or you are really addicted to nicotine. Cause you wouldn’t use tobacco if you made minimum wage. If you did, you wouldn’t give away the better part of an hours work to total strangers unless you empathized with their bummer of a position.
Well, that’s my big thought for today. I could talk about how many more Americans got killed in Iraq today. But that’s another bummer.
posted by Stan at 11:02 PM
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