3WW LXII

Welcome to Three Word Wednesday. Each week, I will post three (or more) words. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write something using all of those words. It can be a few lines, a story, a poem, anything.

Leave a comment if you participate. Many fun and interesting people might visit your blog.

This week’s words are:
Afford
Cigarette
Dim

There has perhaps been no more tragic figure in the United States in the past thirty years than the cigarette.

Once a rite of passage, a sign of maturity, and nervousness, there was a time when the cigarette was the ultimate in cool. Think James Dean with a pack of smokes rolled up in his sleeve. Or Cary Grant offering Audrey Hepburn a light.

But today, it’s future is dim. Yes, there are still a few who voluntarily ingest this once proud carcinogen, but they are now forced to do so in dark alleyways and other secret out of the way places, mostly hidden from the rest of the world.

By and large, the nicotine filled, buzz inducing, cylindrical apparatus has become a symbol of the addicted and those banished by society. And what is it all for? Oh sure, we may gain in life expectancy, but what have we lost?

I’ll tell you what I’ve lost: a cheap and easy way to hit on girls. A light costs next to nothing. A drink, that’s like six bucks. Converted to bacheloronomics, that’s eighteen frozen burritos. And who among us can afford that?

But they never consider the poor bachelor when making these decisions. Next thing you know, they’ll take away the whole astrological chart. Then I’ll really be out of lines.

I just remembered, I once kissed a girl who had been smoking…

Yeah, I think they made the right call.

“I believe the world is burning to the ground. Oh well, I guess we’re gonna find out. Let’s see how far we’ve come…”