Just outside of Augusta, we stopped for gas and I spied a sign in the window of the mart: MARLBOROS: STATE MINIMUM.
I turned to Isaac, who was filling up the tank. “Um, I’m going in for a minute.” He nodded OK.
I looked around me wildly, as though up to no good, and dashed across the pavement to the mart. I sidled up to the register.
“Do you have cartons of Camel Lights?” I asked the woman.
She looked at me in amusement. “Of course!”
I plunked down my wallet. “Excellent. I’ll take one.”
“OK, honey. $33.12.”
$33.12! I snatched up the carton before she could change her mind and dashed out to the lot, holding it over my head like a prize.
“33.12, bitches!” I announced to Isaac and Cathy. “I’m RICH!”
“Yeah, prison rich,” Isaac said.
“Dude, no kidding. I am holding, in my hand, the equivilant of…” I did the math. “ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY DOLLARS WORTH OF CIGARETTES.”*
Isaac just shook his head.
“When I get back to New York? I’m trading these for a bitch.”
* The joke here is that I cannot do math. It’s funny, see?
Jennie Smash 
I never buy cigarettes, so $33.12 sounds expensive to me. Yikes!
At $7-$8 a pack, wouldn’t that be $80 worth of smokes??
and bev… 33.12 is enough to make me weep, sing, and jump for joy. When I go to Pennsylvania or down south, I will buy out the gas station for American Spirits.
Cigarettes cost me $12.50 a pack in Canada (Winnipeg, if that helps you), so yeah 10 packs would cost me $125.00 theoretically// Good find!!
Cigarettes cost me $12.50 a pack in Canada (Winnipeg, if that helps you), so yeah 10 packs would cost me $125.00 theoretically// Good find!!
I quit smoking 2 years ago & I thought "Wow! I'm going to have soooo much extra money now that I don't have to buy cigarettes anymore" – but then my gas-hog vehicle developed a nasty habit & now all my money goes to that….
cigarettes sound good when they are that cheap…
So the question is, does it bother smokers when a stranger asks to bum a single cigarette? I don’t smoke, but I figure this would really piss me off considering the amount of money it costs.
Bev, I used to smoke and it did start to bother me. I’d pass out fewer and fewer as the price went up. But now I’ve quit and don’t worry about that stuff anymore! Whee! (Tho, I gotta say, $33 for a carton is a thing of beauty.)