Matches, lighters

I just lit a cigarette with a match. Next to them, on my desk, there's a good steel lighter. A meter away, three or four disposable lighters.

When I was a kid, matchboxes were made of light veneer and put together with thin blue packing paper (the inside box). Such a box could last forever - I think my collection of 1 dinar coins from 1959 is still in one of those. The sandpaper side wouldn't last, though, it would tear off somewhere halfway through the 50 matches that were in the box. There were people who actually counted them, and there'd usually be 49, sometimes 48. With some luck, you may get 52. In the eyes of older people, who remembered the Kingdom's monopoly on matches, lighters and tobacco before WWII, matches were something valuable.

When I was a teenager, these started going out of fashion, and were first reduced to 40 per box, then the boxes weren't made of veneer but of cardboard. Probably they finally got a glue which worked with cardboard and wasn't too expensive.

Then came the flip-top matches, but didn't catch. I saw them in the US a lot, but only in places where they'd give them for free - usually places that sell tobacco, bars, hotels.

I had a lot of lighters over the years. Gasoline, gas... and many of them worked for years. Many didn't - the more complicated the mechanism, the higher the likelihood they had a designed weak spot, where they'd break. For a while, it was quite common to have two disposables at hand: one had gas, the other had the flint. I get these for free now, in some places, if I buy a whole carton of cigarettes. Some even last through the whole carton.

And now I'm back to matches... because I just like the feeling. And the smell. The nostalgic fool, perhaps, but it's the cheapest pleasure I can imagine.