Man, if only I had the time to use strangers as subjects in my personal little psych experiments.
You probably think I’m being sarcastic…
I’m sure glad I quit. I never realized bumming etiquette was so difficult. I must have been considered a real outsider since I neither gave out nor asked for a cigarette.
Or candy cigarettes. I went as Death this Halloween and handed those out. It’s hard to flick a bic with those nylon skeleton gloves on.
In our smallish group of friends we have one smoker. And then we have the one guy who only smokes when we go out, so he never has cigarettes. Which means he was constantly bumming off the smoker. I say was, because after months and months of this the smoker finally just yelled, “No, dammit, you cannot “borrow” a cigarette. Get your own friggin’ cigarettes.”
“Mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all. Mind if I fart?”
I would assume, then, that you would be able to tell by the smell that I’m smoking cloves, and you wouldn’t ask me for one and then bitch about it. Right? I mean, I understand this. What I don’t understand is someone smelling it a mile away–which even a smoker should be able to–and then getting one and going into Sherlock Holmes mode and saying “Drat! A clove, Watson!” I would generally assume that anyone who has ever smoked a clove or known a clove smoker can tell the very distinctive smell from a ways away.
FWIW, I always accepted the quarter, because I was always broke (still am).
And BTW whoever said earlier that her and her friends paid each other a doller per cigarette is gravely overestimating the monetary value of tobacco.
I used to do this too. I find you’re a lot more likely to make a friend sharing a rollie than a pre-rolled cig, because you can make conversation while you’re rolling it and the other person has something to say “Wow! That’s so cool, I don’t know anybody else who does that” about, which can be a nice little icebreaker.
Woh. The hairs on the back of my neck just stood up.
I was in Singapore airport last month, in the smoking room, looking around the diverse population of whites and Arabs and Chinese and blacks and south-east Asians, and I laughed to myself internally with the words “the brotherhood of nicotine.” Freaky.
I don’t smoke, but I have toyed with the idea of having a pack on hand and giving away a cigarette to anyone who wants one, once they have picked up at least 100 cigarette butts off of the surrounding ground. It’s not the hard to do nowadays.
The brotherhood thing indeed.
The only time in the Navy I can recall officers and enlisted men just being guys was in 10 minute chunks in designated smoking areas.
When I was young and going to bars most every night I would often have my smokes in one pocket and a deck of unfiltered Lucky Strikes in the other for moochers.
Back in high school, we’d hit MickeyD’s after a movie. One girlfriend, “Kelly,” who was on a perpetual diet, would never order fries with her meal. The rest of us suffered no pangs of conscience, so we’d order fries. Keep in mind that this was a time before an order of fries was large enough to feed a small refugee camp.
Anywho, throughout the meal, her resolve would crumble and she’d start “sneaking” fries from OUR trays. And then a few more. And then a few more. By the end of the meal she ended up with more fries than any of us. And while I consider myself to be a generous person, her habit of stealing half of my fries really got on my nerves.
I didn’t realize that everyone was as irritated with her habit as I was until one memorable day when Kelly “slyly” reached for one fry too many from my friend Jennifer’s tray. Jennifer had had enough. She picked up what was left of her fries and threw them on Kelly’s plate and said, “TAKE THE DAMN FRIES, KELLY!”
From then on, Kelly ordered her own fries.
So seriously, folks, if you’re addicted, quit pretending that borrowing cigarettes from other people somehow doesn’t count. Buy your own damn cigarettes.
That person was very rude. The correct response to someone smoking cloves is to say, “Man, I think that ham is done already!”
The start of a beautiful and incredibly dysfunctional relationship.
Could you buy a pack, smoke one, then leave the pack in the smoking area, maybe with a little sign saying “share and enjoy” or something? That way you get your one and only one, but it isn’t like throwing them away because you know someone is going to pick them up. Kind of like getting the one you need and then giving the rest away before you can be tempted by them.
Enjoy,
Steven
When I worked in NYC I used to swear I had a sign on my head that broadcast my willingness to give out smokes - every day, someone would ask me. I know what it’s like to not have a cig, so I’d usually give them one. But, I had good cigarette karma there, I guess, because there was a tobacco shop a couple of blocks away that would actually give me cigarettes and let me bring my money whenever I had it. The first time I was brave enough to ask (funny how brave a person can be when they’re in the throes of withdrawal) they actually offered to give me a carton, but I just asked for three packs to get me through the end of the week. Of course, I always paid them when I said I would, and I had the peace of mind of knowing that I’d never be smokeless at work.
Roadside hawkers are a big thing here, selling everything from those umbrella nets you put over your food to little toy guitars. I never buy from them, but if I happen to be smoking a cigarette (which is most of the time when I’m driving) it never fails that the person will ask me for a cigarette. Whether I’ll give one is determined mostly by my mood - if I gave every time, I’d have no cigarettes for myself (these people are literally at every traffic light) and half the time, I think they just sell them to other people rather than smoke them themselves.
But generally, I’ll lend one if I’ve got it to spare. They say smoking is more addictive than heroin, and I tend to believe it sometimes. I know I’ve hit some pretty rough lows - rooting through my ashtrays looking for anything that hasn’t been smoked to the filter, to even guiltily eyeing mostly unsmoked cigarettes in public ashtrays. I’ve never actually sunk so low as to swipe one, but I have definitely considered it. It’s when I’m that low that I’ll ask a complete stranger walking down the street if they might have an extra cigarette - better that than smoking someone else’s discarded butt!
In my younger days, I would scavenge them for the tobacco, and roll it into a new cigarette. A nasty, foul, horrible cigarette.
Go stick your head in a pig.
A propos of nothing, I have to say the worst place for bumming fags I’ve ever seen was in the Castro in San Francisco (now stop that, you in the cheap seats). Almost every thirty seconds someone asked me for a cigarette when I was smoking outside the bar. At first I was irritated, but eventually indulged, after some banter which resulted in some great impromptu street theater. I swear on my mother’s life, one of the guys who asked for a cigarette was dragging his boyfriend along on a leash.
To add to countless personal observation, I give freely and try not to bum. Once in a while, one of the more notorious bummers will come around with a pack for me. It’s damn near utopian.
Not to say I don’t empathize with the OP. I’ve been there, I’ve felt that way. Most days though I say, “Yeah, you need a light?”
There is this ONE guy though…rides my bus. I actually saw him take a cigarette out, notice I was smoking, put that cigarette back into a half full pack, and then ask if he could bum one.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is why communism doesn’t work.
God, I hate that guy. Just thinking about it…Excuse me, I must go grind my teeth for a while.
…and, obviously, I told half-pack guy to go fuck himself.
Ah yes. The old Zig-Zag Mongrel. even better if you get some menthol in there, along with something nasty like Camels
In my younger days, my dealer-friend and I used to do this with another popular smokeable plant; but I can’t say I’ve ever done it with tobacco.
Now that I think about it, same guy and I did something similar. He smoked filterless cigs for a while, and a lot of times we would scavenge those butts for tobacco, because obviously there was no filter to smoke down to. Generally, though, we just used the tobacco in joints, not for more cigarettes.