Cigarette Butts

I went shopping for my niece's birthday after work today. It was actually a rather refreshing experience for me. Being big and tall, it is very frustrating for me to go clothes shopping, since I am limited to a handful of stores and basically none of the specialty shops have anything. But for my niece, I didn't have to worry about sizes. Also, I didn't really have to worry about if anything matched because they were little outfits.

Anyway, the real reason for this blog isn't shopping for my niece. Because after I went shopping, I went to dinner, which was good but still not the subject of the story. It is what happened as I was walking out of the restaurant. There was a guy taking off the top of one of those cigarette disposal poles. About 2 inches wide column with holes on the sides that flares down at the bottom. Anyway the guy was searching through the disposed of cigarettes for something to smoke.

I have seen homeless people, at least that's how they look, in the past pick up cigarettes from the street and smoking them. But this seemed worse that than. I suppose it's pretty much the same in reality, but it is still a bit disturbing. Kind of like an alcoholic drinking the dregs of other people's drinks at a bar. Anyway, it made me wonder if he's driven to it entirely from the addiction to cigarettes or for the enjoyment he gets from the smoking. Similarly for the homeless people who spend their nickels and dimes to buy alcohol instead of food. Are they that strongly addicted, or do they crave the escape the alcohol gives them.

Another thing that I was reminded of was an old math problem. A man figures out a way to unroll cigarette butts and combine them together to form new cigarettes. It takes five cigarettes to create a new cigarette. If they man finds 25 cigarette butts, how many cigarettes can he smoke?