The other day, while I was walking alongside the blacktop that runs by my farm, I found something I had never found.

I find lots of things alongside my road. I once found a torn-up Dear John letter that some female had sent to some male, and although it was torn up, I managed to put together enough sentences to realize that 1. The guy was a jerk. 2. That it’s not nice to slyly date your girlfriend’s friends. And 3. That the female writing this letter had a tendency to perhaps overdramatize the situation, as in, no sense not piling on to an already bad situation.

John, or whatever his name was, tore it into little pieces and flang it out his pickup truck window in a kind of congealed gob. Thus was I able to reassemble it to some extent.

Just the other day, as I was walking along–with my garbage bag to pick up trash—I found a pack of Marlboros lying there, and not too far from that pack, a small, cheap lighter. One might assume that this smoker left them lying perhaps on the roof of his truck,  where he put them while he was busy loading the truck. Perhaps he was busy—1. Tearing up some other Dear John letter regarding his love life. Or 2. Drinking beer, which I concluded because there was also a discarded beer can down the road another hundred feet or so.

Do you know that a pack of cigarettes is over $9.00?

When I found that out, I was, to use one of my mother’s favorite exclamations, flabbergasted. I’ve always been quite against smoking (and that’s putting it quite mildly) and now, with this information, one may deduce quite correctly that I’m also against spending money. Well, the story as I’m telling it here goes on to her wondering what to do with several packs that she had, well, inherited, inherited from someone close to her who was no longer here. Even more specifically, no longer here to request of her that she pick cigarettes up for him in town when she went shopping.

She doesn’t smoke. So her consuming them is a big pile of nope. Not a viable alternative regarding that alternative.

Everyday, in this complicated life we lead, new conundrums–another of my mother’s favorite words—keep popping up, and here was another one. Exactly what is the correct etiquette regarding disposing of a loved one’s possessions, when said possessions are expensive cigarettes. 

Well, I said, the other day—(see the first sentence up above). Perhaps the lighter I found alongside the road were the identical situation as yours? Someone had cigs to dispose of, and were extra nice enough to throw in a lighter? And perhaps we have some precedent here as to likely solutions to this pickle?

By the way, if you’re walking down Highway 1 today, and you’re a smoker, you’re going to find good fortune in your path.