Smoking Kills... Sometimes Hilariously

 I've already said I was a smoker for quite a few years and sometimes while smoking or attempting to smoke we tend to not think of what it might do, but rather getting the nicotine into our blood stream immediately. I was stationed at a real small base back in 1994-1998, Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, Bridgeport, Ca.  Because the base was small I often had to do things that would not normally fall under the purview of Telephone Switchboard Repairer.  

One winter day, I had been assigned to go up the mountain and check the antennas on our repeater site.  We took a tracked vehicle that takes about an hour or so to get to the top of the mountain where the repeater site is.  Around this point I realize I forgot my cigarette lighter down the mountain and my partner on the mountain doesn't have a lighter because he's not a smoker.  

Now under normal circumstances I consider myself a smart fellow, but in the throes of a nicotine induced panic attack I no longer resemble anything close to an intelligent life form.  I look for a heat source first to light the cigarette, the soldering iron never quite got warm enough everywhere to light a cigarette.  Then I see a napkin and I try napkin with the soldering iron (funny how this sounds like Monkey Island to me).  Still not quite what I need, but then yes I see it, a can of gasoline, it all makes sense to me now, dip the napkin in gasoline, that will help to start the necessary ingredient to my vice.  

Gasoline soaked napkin in hand, I grab the soldering iron, now I'm not sure if there was a spark somewhere or what, but the napkin instantly lit on fire.  Afraid for my life I dropped the napkin which is now an inferno in the wind and blowing into the shack that I'm standing in.  Fortunately for me I was still thinking on my feet and I grabbed the fire extinguisher and put out my last opportunity at a cigarette.    

Wouldn't the story be better if I found a way to light it you ask, sure but it's not the truth, the truth is once I got down the mountain and was ridiculed by everyone someone offered to light my cigarette for me. His lighter wasn't working either and we ended up just going to the store and buying a bunch of lighters and putting them everywhere. I started doing this for myself around the same time, so I wouldn't be without and occasionally I still find lighters in unlikely places.