Ω THE LITTLE CIGARETTE

There was once a little cigarette that was manufactured in a big tobacco factory. He was rolled by a machine along with thousands and thousands of other little cigarettes like himself. They all looked the same but yet somehow, he was different. From the very first moment of his life as he bounced and rolled along the conveyor belt along with many more smokes of his kind, he dreamt of being the first smoke that a young man would enjoy in his life. This would start a lifelong addiction that would lead the lad to smoke cigarette after cigarette down his precious lungs. He would be that young man’s first and last mistake in this life, he smiled to himself in gleeful anticipation. He would be the young man’s first smoke, and in a way, also his last. He was then wrapped up in a cigarette packet along with twenty other kingsize filter smokes, and shipped off to the shop in his cellophane wrapping. A brand new, and very deadly little cigarette. In the shop he was purchased a few weeks later by a customer. But it was not a young man as he had dreamt, it was a much older man who was seriously thinking of kicking the habit due to ill health, brought about by a lifetime of smoking. The man took him home and took him out of the packet, he got smoked down the man’s lungs with great pleasure, and stubbed to a crushed  little stub under his heel soon thereafter. The man then gave the packet with its remaining few cigarettes still in it away to a stranger on the street. He had quit the habit, even if it took a few months to get over the severe nicotine adiction of a lifetime of hard smoking. The little cigarette with great expectations then realized that he had been an old man’s last smoke, not a young man’s first one. This made him think for a moment. Never count your chickens before they hatch.