My First Lighter

The other day my coworker/friend Matt was in a motorbike accident. He got pretty banged up and ended up having to have ankle surgery at the French Hospital. As soon as he was out of surgery I jumped on my motorbike to go pay him a visit. Instead of buying flowers I decided to give him a more practical gift: The Wire Season 5. This was the perfect gift to give Matt for a few reasons:

1. On Friday night we were talking about The Wire and how he loved it and couldn't wait to see Season 5.
2. I just finished watching Season 5 the other day (not my favorite season but still genius).
3. Ryan had bought the Season 5 DVDs so it cost me nothing to pass them to Matt.

Despite being doped up on morphine -- or maybe because of it -- Matt was extremely happy to get the gift.

Forty eight hours later I went to visit Matt in the hospital again and brought him another gift: Bill Bryons's "A Walk In The Woods." I finished this book about a month ago and thought Matt might really enjoy it. Turns out he's a Bryson fan and hadn't read the book yet. Again, he was really happy to get the gift.

All that said, the greedy bastard wanted ANOTHER gift -- he asked me to go buy him a lighter. When I first came to the hospital the other day he was moaning for a cigarette. Well in the forty eights hours that I was gone a few packs had appeared on his hospital night stand. However, nobody had gotten him a lighter. Matt asked if I could get him one and I obliged. This was a tough thing to do because:

a) I was the Treasurer of Peer To Peer -- the non drinking, non drugging club -- in high school. Yeah, I'm that much of a loser.
b) I have never been an enabler to smokers. In fact, I had a reputation in college for drunkenly grabbing cigarettes out of people's mouths and throwing them to the floor. I obviously found this funny, others not so much.
c) I have never bought a lighter in my life.

All that said, I walked out of the hospital and found a lighter:



Here's the happy patient a few minutes later: