How much does a cigarette cost?

Well even with exorbitant state taxes as in NY or CA one pack of Marlboro Lights would not cost more than $10, that makes a cigarette not more than 50 cents.

But I know a guy who actually smoked a cigarette that cost him $230 + 15 cents.

The central character in this post is the same "oxymoron" guy. I think I should start a stereotype with his name, but was warned against it.

Now, this guy is a big Shahrukh Khan fan and fancies that he looks like the star. And he is always hell bent on making people say that he looks like Shahrukh. He still tries to convince me. I haven't succumbed to the torture yet. If it ended there, it would have been good but the problem arises when this guy even copies the star's mannerisms.

While driving his car which is barely "strung" together, which he drives with elan with his cellphone in one hand and cigarette in another. I don't know how he drives, but drives nonetheless. On the Interstate 95 where he is whizzing by all the lesser mortals who are driving within the speed limit, he suddenly thinks of Shahrukh and how he flicks the cigarette butt into the air. He flicks it the same way out of the window, into the air. This butt had a mind of its own and decided to go and crash against the cop's windshield. Well it is night, otherwise he would have noticed the cop behind him, I think.

Now cops in NJ are really not known for their forgiveness. So the cop turned his lights on. It took a few seconds for this guy to realize that those lights were for him. So he pulled over. He was rehearsing as what to say about the speed he was going at and he decided that he would say it was 74 on a 65 zone.

The cop asks him if he knew why he was pulled over. He said that he didn't (I wish he said that it was for speeding). The cop takes his license, registration, insurance tallies the database if he was a criminal then comes back saying that it was for throwing a cigarette butt on the highway. The cop gave him a ticket (amount not mentioned) for throwing the cigarette butt on the highway. He doesn't even mention about speeding. When I drive on the highway and I have driven a lot (more than 100,000 miles), I usually see at least one cigarette flying out of cars every other minute depending on the traffic, but have never seen anyone get a ticket for it.

Now he comes to my place the next day and tells me that he got a ticket for smoking a cigarette. I kind of understood what he said and told him that Highway Littering fine was $500 just to make him a bit more miserable. So he calls up the court and finds out that the amount was $230. He was happy that it was not 500.

Now the lady that talked to him on the phone had a hard time finding out the amount because she hadn't seen a case like this in her 10 years of service and was even thinking that it was the first case of its kind under that court.

And at the end she said (read in an African American accent) "How did yo get a ticket for this? If yo cannot dispose yor butt without getting caught, then yo should stop smoking..... and driving"