Hey kid! Yeah you, the one exiting the school house with your rolling backpack and minding your own business. I have a question for ya. Do you want to bum one of my extremely expensive cigarettes? I realize that this is a textbook case of peer pressure, but in this moment, as I lean against this particular metal fence outside a middle school, it just feels right. I also just got off my shift as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman and thought I’d practice on an easier target to build up my self confidence a bit. Selling someone a vacuum and peer pressuring a kid to take up a lifelong addiction is pretty much the same. Anywho, do ya want one or not, bozo? I mean, sir? 

And if you take one, just remember, I paid a lot of money for these. So that makes all the more sense that I would want to give one to a kid for free. The door-to-door vacuum cleaning selling business I mentioned earlier–yeah, it’s all on commission. Daddy hasn’t seen a pay out in quite some time and I need a lot of these suckers to take the edge off. Which, again, doesn’t support my case of wanting to give a ciggie up, for free, to allow a kid who isn’t even going to appreciate it. But I’m trying to close here. While we’re on the subject of closing, too, do you think your old lady would want to buy a vacuum? I mean, your old man buys the vacuum, and your mother uses it. If she’s anything like my ma, I bet she makes a real good chicken pot pie, like housewives do!

Okay, let me get back into my original spiel. Little Johnny, what if I told you that by bumming a cigarette off of me right here, right now, you’ll get a lifetime supply of addiction? I smoke a pack of these a day and I’ve developed a perpetual cough, yellowed teeth, and wrinkles out the wazoo. I feel sick all the time since I first purchased a pack of these! So bad that my ball and chain has to go to the corner store and get me another bottle of Tylenol without a protective packaging every other week and nurse me back to health. Just kidding, I don’t have a wife. It’s my mom, but to be fair, I’m the baby of the family of 12 kids. My point, kid, is that my life could be yours. Doesn’t that sound far out?

So kid, let me ask you something. What’s something every 12-year-old kid wants to be? Cool! That’s right, kiddo. And the only way to get that brace face, pimply pizza face of yours to make the girls jump out of their skirts is to have one of these smokes! Case in point? Danny Zuko in Grease! The biggest movie of the year. That guy is the definition of the bee’s knees. All you kids are talking about it right? He’s got it all. Leather jacket. Hair gelled. Completely disrespects women. All while smoking a good ol’ fashion cig. If that little music man is not for you, smoking  cigs can make you feel like a cowboy! The fellas will be calling you the Marlboro Man! You know, the advertisement you see all the time. If you like cigarettes enough, you may even one day be mature enough to chew tobacco and spit it into a jug like a real Clint Eastwood. Now that’s an actor that gets with the current times! Am I selling you yet? 

Look at it this way, scallywag. You don’t need to be a movie star to start smoking these bad boys. It’s simple. All you need is a 1972 Mustang, a leather jacket, and some hair gel. You’ll be on the cover of Playgirl! Don’t worry, they’ll Photoshop the wrinkles you’ll get from these things. If you’re lucky, you may just end up like me. A middle-aged man leaning against a metal fence 50 yards from a school. Sure I have a car I can drive myself, but there’s something about seeing a 40-year-old man at 3 in the afternoon smoking a cigarette right by a playground. I’m surprised I’m the only guy here doing this! 

So what do you say? Do you want a piece of these $25 cigarettes I just bought? I feel like I really sold you on the benefits of cigarettes. Don’t even worry what the Surgeon General says, that guy is just a narc hired by the government to ruin everything groovy about smoking these squares. So let me ask you one more time, do you want an addiction or not? Also, would you buy a vacuum from the person who ended up ruining your life by introducing you to a money-sucking habit?