How to Steal a Lighter

"You stole my lighter!' my best friend cries at me, "You dirty rotten lighter thief!"

I have a confession to make. I am a heartless lighter klepto.

I don't shoplift, and I don't pick pockets. I don't scoop up loose change off of other peoples floors, and I don't lift small shiny objects from their bathrooms.

I will however, squirrel away any and every lighter that passes through my grubby little hands.

Lighters may be the most stolen objects in our civilization today, far outstripping ball point pens. Because while ball point pens may be useful to everyone, lighters are absolutely necessary to smokers.

I hypothesize that the average lighter can travel around the world in less than two weeks.

All inhalers of burning plant matter share a fear of being without fire. This fear is fostered slowly, built by the repetitive panic brought on each time he or she misplaces the combustion catalyst and must pat themselves up and down like a xylophone.

The paranoia is sealed by the occasional horror show that ensues when a smoker finds themselves inexorably unable to make fire. Sometimes this happens to us while we're at home, and in the following manic search, little is left of our homes as we knew them.

Sometimes this happens to us while we are out in public, and we are forced to bounce like a pinball from random stranger to random stranger, desperately searching for an igniting Samaritan.

Wherever our traumas may have occurred, they all produce the same effect. They turn us into light handed sneaks.

I don't even know when I do it anymore. Some days I come home and empty out my pockets and there are two lighters. Other times I reach into my trousers to find six or seven completely unfamiliar ones.

Yesterday I started my day in possession of a Cleveland Browns lighter. By sunset it had transformed into a Betty Page lighter. I have no memory of this happening.

However, while I am proficient, I am in no way the greatest lighter thief ever to grace this world.