Hal's Rant-O-Matic©...Desperate
Warning, this is a long one, so if you don't like the rants, just skip it.
I am pathetic, I freely admit that. But I am also devoted to my obsessiveness. Meaning I am obsessed with delivering to you my real life experiences. The following will serve to enlighten you to the perils of cigarette smoking. And if not, it will show you how helpless those addicted to smoking are. I will try to finish this up before I have to make a mad dash to the store for more smokes, but I make no promises, because I am out of smokes, and no longer coherent.
I knew I was low on cigarettes, but felt I could muster the resolve to resist running right out this morning to get some extras (Like a few cartons) to have on hand before running completely out. So I ran out about halfway through updating the news. I freaked of course, and immediately went on a search for some. I had none left. If you have none left, and want to forestall going out and getting some, then the next best thing is to grab some of the wife's smokes. Lo and behold, she was out as well, and at work. So there was no bumming hers.
It was then I remembered that around a month ago, her and I had gone somewhere together in my van, and she had left a partial pack of smokes on the dash board. I ran out to see if they were still there, and yes! There they were buried under the spare napkins! I get four or five napkins in my lunch everyday, and I am only sloppy enough to use two or three, so they have a tendency to pile up a bit. Which explains why the cigarettes were still there, because if I had spotted them sooner, they would have been gone long ago.
There were three, stale ones left in the pack. And that is what allowed me to get as far as I did with updating. Then I ran out again. Now I had to put plan B into action. Every night before I go to bed, I light a smoke and take that one last drag that gets me through the night, and then put it out. So I have some rather long butts that accumulate in the ashtray. Butts are nasty. But it is the nicotine that has me by the nads, not the taste. I scrounged up two nice ones, ones that were not broken, or crushed beyond usefulness. I had to dig for them, as my wife had emptied the ashtray just this morning. Luckily, nothing to awful nasty ever resides in our waste basket in the bedroom, other than some worn out dirty socks and snot encrusted tissues. I didn't have much trouble locating them. Now I felt I could make it through the rest of the news, and make it to the Clan Announcements!
Upon finishing the news updating, still having the Clan Announcements ahead of me, I found myself twitching in my seat, and looking for something to sear my lungs with. Plan C was soon implemented. A search and seek mission that could turn up any lost item in the largest of homes. But while a lost item can usually be found, that was not the case in my search for smokes. There were simply none left to be found. I finally gave in and got dressed to commence the excursion to the local country store to purchase the object of my addiction, when passing by the 86 van of mine that has been broken down in the driveway for a year and a half I spotted them! Two sun faded empty looking packs of cigarettes!
I ceremoniously opened the door, with great expectations, and reached for the first pack, which incidentally was my brand. I realized instantly, it was empty. I never, ever leave partial packs laying about! You could tell by the way both ends were still erect, and it was crushed in the middle, the sign that I had checked it perviously by squeezing the middle with my thumb and finger. It must have been left there, empty, four months ago when I had last tried to coax the Chevy 305 into life. It had set there all summer, the cellophane had become crystallized, and disintegrated in my hands. The only part that remained was where I had gotten grease from hands on the wrapper. Bummer.
But there was still one pack left to check. I looked at it warily. It was not crushed. It was not my brand. It looked funny though. It was the brand my wife smoked, but the sun had actually faded it from the original color green, to blue. And there was no cellophane wrapper left, meaning it had probably been on the dash board since the van broke down eighteen months ago. This was not a good sign. But I was desperate. I reached for the pack, even as I pictured the woman I saw on TV a few days ago, smoking through a hole in her throat. To my delight, I discovered a cache of three more cigarettes!
With a trembling hand, I removed the first one and lit it, only to have it vaporize in a puff of smoke, singeing my eyebrow. There was no tobacco left in it. Evidently, some insect craved tobacco the same as I did, and had eaten it all. I removed the second one from the package, and examined it carefully. It looked fine, but as I tried to light it, all the dried tobacco simply drained out of the end of it. I was horrified. I was down to the last one. I cuddled the pack, lovingly to my chest, knowing that I would have to go to the store eventually, but not until I had this one last smoke. Sitting in the van, I carefully put the cigarette between my lips, making sure I kept the open end pointed up at all times. With my head tipped back, I lit a match and brought it slowly to the tip of the cigarette..... Gahhhhhh!!!!! I lit the headliner to the van on fire!!!!!!!
I jumped from the van with the cigarette dangling from my mouth, and ran to the garden hose. I grabbed it and rushed toward the burning van, squeezing the handle to direct the stream of water into the door. Nothing happened! As it was a rather cool night last night, I realized the water must have frozen in the hose, so I kept shaking it and looking in the end, only to be blasted in the face when the ice broke loose. I was drenched. My cigarette was ruined, and my van was burning. I threw the hose down in utter disgust, cursing at the burning van for ruining the cigarette. "Burn baby burn!" I shouted. I calmly jumped in my other van and drove away to get some fresh smokes, knowing that I could deal with the burning van better when I got back with a lit cigarette in my face, the smoke stinging my eyes all the while.
The moral to this story is, don't smoke. It is very addicting, costs a lot, makes your breath smell, and makes you do stupid things. Like blaming inanimate objects for your stupidity and then letting them burn to the ground. At least the insurance adjuster didn't know it wasn't running when it caught on fire, so things didn't work out to badly......
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