Remember that time...

Dec 07, 2006 03:02

A year ago my long-time friend and short-time roomate was catching a lot of flack for smoking the butts of everyone else's cigarettes.
I feel kind of bad we gave Max such a hard time about it, because at this very moment I'm digging through an ashtray to retrieve those precious three drags. I'm nearly burning off my nose in the process. Granted, these are my cigarettes. He smoked his (in very rapid succession) down to the filter, then he'd smoke the rest of ours.

As a joke I started putting the butts in a plastic bag for a month, and gave them to Max for Christmas. It was a little mean-spirited, but he actually seemed to appreciate it.  "Conservation at it's best!" he said with a sweet smile.

When you're really poor, you get accustomed to things that seemed down-right gross when you weren't.  Not that I wasn't poor when I was living in the duplex, I just made damn good tips at Coffeehouse.  Having cash every day for cigarettes makes them a lot more disposable, even if I was only making $400 a month on my paychecks.

Sometimes I wish that it were mandatory: everyone spends the first year after high-school working and living without assistance from their families.  Not only would it make college-bound people more appreciative of their education, but from my experience it makes more humble, less materialistic adults.

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