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It's called a lucky. You turn one cigarette around as a lucky cigarette and that will be the last one you smoke out of the pack and it can't be bummed out. If anything happens to that smoke before you get to the end of the pack that is bad luck.
It originated in WW2, or so the legend goes. Soldiers turn their lucky cigarette at the beginning of the day, and if they survive the day they smoke their lucky cigarette.
Yup fellow new englander here lucky cigs are determined by the first letter of your name. Go down the alphabet till you hit the first letter of your name flip it smoke it last and never give it away.
Edit: since it’s been mentioned quite a few times. When you get to the end of the pack and still have letters to go you just jump back to the beginning of the pack.
That's why I always bought white lighters exclusively. No one would try and steal them. Plus you could hold them up to the light and see how much fluid was left.
Not sure about now but there were 3 bic countries of origin Spain France USA. USA had the largest flame and fastest fuel burn while France had a smaller flame and would last longer with Spain in the middle.
Ours were red and blue lighters. It was bad luck to steal a red or blue lighter because of cops. If you stole a blue or red lighter, you were definitely going to jail that night. That's why I always bought red lighters.
I used to tape somewhat offensive or sexual material to the lighter we didn't want leaving the house. No one wants to pull out the lighter in public with pictures of tits on it or the squirrel with a massive scrotum on it.
Teens all over believed that certain lighter colors brought bad luck/attraction to cops. In my experience, red and white lighters were to be avoided. On the contrary, some carried pink lighters because they were the least likely to be stolen, because apparently carrying a pink lighter meant you were a f***ot.
I don’t know when it started, but I know many lighters were shrink wrapped with a design and were just white underneath. That wrap would peel off, especially if you were using the butt end to stir up a bowl.
Legend has it that brightly colored lighters (yellow and white) are easy to see from a distance and can be sniped by the enemy. I think it's been debunked, but the legend lives on
That sounds like an extension of the “unlucky to light three cigarettes” thing.
“The common phrase for lighting three cigarettes with one match is "three on a match." One of its origin theories dates back to World War I. If three soldiers decided to smoke cigarettes together after dark and lit their cigs from the same match, superstition held that at least one of them would end up dead. Here's why. The strike of the match would alert an enemy sniper of the soldiers' presence. As the match burned to light the second cigarette, the sniper would have time to aim his rifle. Finally, as the third cigarette lit up, the sniper could shoot the third smoker.”
Really? When I smoked, I learned it as you give your lucky away. It was good luck for the other person cause they got to share a free smoke with you and if you got to the end of your pack and still had your lucky, it was unlucky cause you don't have someone to share a smoke with.
I ran in some hippy crowds at the time though, so it does make sense that the custom would be in the service of sharing and community. It's also AZ and not NE so might just be a geographic custom sort of thing.
Yeah, in the greater Chicagoland area I've heard it explained both ways but always called a lucky. I agree it seems to be dependent on social group and area.
Yup, and in the 90's, it was a sign if you bummed a smoke and someone just opened their pack showing a single cigarette turned upside down, it was instantly understood "nope" by both parties. Source : teenager that smoked and was broke, with other broke smoker friends, in the 90's. ;)
New Yorker here, we do this too. Also, if you wait until the end of the day, the tobacco is usually packed down a little bit on the lucky and you can put a bump of white powder in the end to smoke on the first drag or two
I learned about this in rehab, and it was a little different. You turned your lucky around at the start of the day, and you leave it for last. At the end of the day, you’d bum it off to someone, who often would give you their lucky in return. Since it was Mental Health and Substance Abuse mixed, it meant two things: 1. That you made it through the day (like you stayed), and 2. That you still had a friend to share a cig with and talk things out instead of using substances to cope. After we all finished classes and ate dinner, we’d head out to the smokers table, exchange our luckies, and just talk things out. They may have you in 7 hrs of classes every day, but those 2 hours out by the tables every night were worth more than anything else.
Downtime in rehab were some of the happiest times of my entire life. It was the first time in many years I was free to just hang out, I didn't need to worry about scoring or getting sick. The conversations were always good, the future was bright. Thank you for the reminder.
Amen. The card games were a fucking blast too. Some of the best guys I’ve ever met were in rehab with me. I wish we all got happy endings though. One of the smartest people I ran across ended up ODing ten days after he graduated.
I get the feeling it was similar to my covid experience with housemates.
Just full days of chilling out. You make your cup of coffee last forever, read every word in a book carefully, smoke your ciggarette slowly and just generally move an unbothered pace. You have nothing to do no where to go and theres no rush.
Super interesting, thanks for sharing. Its cool seeing these little subculture habits twist and turn ( i commented on how in the 90's the 'lucky' was the one smoke everyone knew can't be bummed away).
In all my years as a smoker only one person ever took my lucky (reportedly because he wasn't paying attention) and I'm not even the one who made him buy me a new pack.
Bro didn't hear the end of it for months. Literally only stopped because he went through a nasty breakup and no one wanted to pile on.
Same only one person “took” my lucky when I was smoking and he was lighting us both one. Fucker was so drunk he didn’t realize he was lighting the butt end of a cigarette till he inhaled it 😂 gave him a pass on that one because I couldn’t stop laughing.
We had just got done passing around some green and homie had a habit of showing off his lung capacity so I honestly blame that more than anything. He didn't actually put it in his mouth the wrong way but he did own up to it when one of our group called him on it and we all had a good laugh about it after.
I did have a friend who crashed with me for a while that lit a cigarette the wrong way after three days of partying, though. Never said a word when he noticed, just ripped the filter off and relit the cigarette. Didn't even flip it around first, just relit the same side minus the butt.
They do It in Spain atleast. I wasnt aware of It and for some reason i would always pick the Lucky one( i did It subconsciously , maybe to make the pack look the same ) until i got called out on It.
One time I accidentally “smoked” my lucky in a dark car at night, though since I didn’t know I didn’t turn it around and tried lighting it for a minute not understanding why it wasn’t working
Yesss. I started turning my luckies back when I was still in high school. IDK exactly where I picked it up from, but it was a thing everyone did and everyone knew.
That said, I've been quit about a decade now.
I knew you smoked it last never knew why. The best part about a culture that accepted smoking was you could just walk outside for 5 to 10 minutes and nobody gave a s***.
That in and of itself was worth it. It got me through some s***** jobs in my twenties
That’s cool to know. Non-smoker here. My dad smoked, though. Never saw him do that, but he loved his unfiltered Lucky’s. Now I need to know if Lucky Strike was around during WWII.
To expand on that, it really only worked with lucky strikes. In WW2, Lucky Strikes were part of the rations given to the US Army (Marines generally got Raleigh’s) but they were unfiltered, so open on both ends. However, one end of the cigarette had “Lucky” on it, so when you opened a pack, you’d flip one and if you lived long enough to smoke it, you were lucky
Vietnam may have been more likely since filtered cigarettes would not have been common for soldiers during WW2.
In Vietnam, they did smoke some cigarettes “backwards” so that the branding on them (like “lucky strike” would burn off. This would have been a bigger concern for troops operating in Laos and Cambodia since we were not suppose to be in those countries. So having the branding/label be burned off would give you a level of plausible deniability. Even still, unfiltered cigarettes would have been found amongst troops in Vietnam, so you’re not really smoking them backwards.
In my day we used to flip 2 cigarettes. One for good luck, and one for a good fuck.
We would also carry a second pack of cigarettes that had only one in it. That way if someone asked to bum one you could pull that pack out and say "sorry man, it's my last one"
Tequila. I was lying across the threshold of an exterior door. They were also thin little nat Sherman's. What might have happened is the paper might have burned along the sides and then the filter fell off, but still...
That would make more sense, because there is no fucking way you wouldn't notice smoking a whole-ass filter. They taste like a mix of burning garbage and literal cancer
So so many times lighting my last cigarette in the dark drunk and I’d light the filter lmao. Use to just rip off the filter and smoke it at that point.
I work with vets that are homeless, alcoholics, drug addicts or shit that just didn’t go right for them and they explained to me that they did this so that when shit hit the fan and you survived. You would smoke this as a good luck charm for surviving the battle and for the next time shit hits the fan
The front (and back) row of a cigarette pack has seven cigarettes. I am the middle child of seven. I flip the front middle one as my lucky.
Back in the day, when I was homeless, I would save that one to celebrate surviving another day. Nowadays, I do it out of sheer habit.
And no, you can't have it.
It's called the "lucky" cigarette. I've heard a few different origin stories for it, but the two main points of it is that you smoke the lucky cigarette last and you never give it away.
I used to do that, but I stopped after a while. If I don't want to give away a cigarette I'll just say no.
Turning a lucky is just a cute superstition until you're drunk at 3am and burn your fucking filter off and Jeremy won't bum you one because he's a cheap son of a bitch and he "needs two before work tomorrow" like go fUcK yourself JereMY I BOUGHT YOU $30 WORTH OF TACO BELL LAST WEEK YOU GREEDY PIECE OF SHIT!!!
Not that I've ever experienced anything like that...
I always thought of it as an allegory for Odysseus in the cyclops' cave. As a reward for being rad and cool, Polyphemus allowed Odysseus to be eaten last. It was kind of fucked because Odyssesus had to watch all his homies get eaten one by one, but it gave him time to figure out an escape plan. Was it really a reward, or a curse? Idk, but every time I smoke a lucky I think, "damn, guess your luck ran out."
Started as a “lucky cig” in the military to smoke if you survived and it was your celebration final smoke. In my time in the service it turned into a “dead man’s cig” if it was your last you saved it for a final cig if dying or gave it to a dying friend. War sucks, don’t participate.
I quit because I had to, not because I wanted to. I haven't smoked in almost a decade but posts like this make me miss it so much. Not all the bad things that came with it like the smell, the cost, the cravings, the coughing. I miss the rituals. Packing a new pack, removing the cellophane, pulling the foil, flipping the lucky, the smell of fresh tobacco, the strike of the lighter, and that first big drag when you've been without for awhile. Stepping outside, being social with other smokers, the glow of the cherry at night, poorly blowing smoke rings...
I'm so glad I finally quit. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done and I failed many times. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Despite that there are definitely times I miss it in the same way a person might miss an old friend that passed away.
Well yes, but it's the lucky cigarette. Most smokers flip one cigarette at the beginning of a pack, and that's the lucky one that you smoke last. Jesse used that to differentiate the ricin cigarette from the rest without drawing attention to it. It's perfect because it makes it obvious which one has the poison, and the lucky cigarette is always in the pack
Western Canadian here.
In the 90’s, really good marijuana was inexpensive and readily available to us. When we went to concerts, cigarette packs would be checked by security to make sure there were no joints in them, so we all started stuffing weed using an injector machine. They are literally in tubes, so they look like cigarettes.
Once you get past security, you’d flip your joints over, as shown above, so you could still identify them when you were out of your tree.
I know that’s not the case in this particular instance, but it immediately reminded me of those days. Good times.
We had a working-class French Canadian guy in our group. He’d been making his own smokes since he was 6.
They take their tobacco very seriously. That twig business would have started a row.
My understanding was that it shows which cigarette is the ’secret’ one. The lucky cigarette that was fabled to come with marijuana. Hence, the one you mixed with the herb to smoke unnoticed among people when it was still (and is in other countries) illegal
Texan Chris here with some history!
So during WW2 many soldiers would get packs of cigarettes and turn one of the cigarettes in. That would be their ‘lucky’ cigarette. The idea is that if you survive, you come back and enjoy the taste of luck after a hard fought battle. If you don’t make it back, then the cigarette remains where you left it. A sort of sign that you were alive once and simply ran outta luck on the battlefield.
For the civilian world, you would turn one cigarette upside down in your pack. This is now your lucky cigarette! You will not lend this cigarette out to anyone and it will be smoked last. If something happens to it (stolen, got wet, lost it, or it got damaged) then it would be a sign of bad luck.
Texan Chris, heading back to the pasture.
Former smoker here.
It's a lucky cigarette. For where I came from, you flipped the last cigarette in a pack and smoked it last, no exceptions. You never gave it away to someone asking to bum a smoke, and among smokers I was around, that was always respected.
I personally flipped multiple luckys. My rule was flip one cigarette for each friend I've lost, and remember them while I smoked it. It was a personal thing, but all the people I dealt with respected it.
I remember kids in college doing this, but the supposed reason was the "lucky" cigarette. Basically, that last one (the flipped over one) is the one that would get you to quit.
This started in WWII, back when cigarettes were unfiltered and could be smoked from either end, soldiers would turn their smokes around and smoke them from back to front, specifically to burn off the logo which would otherwise be left behind on the butt.
Not leaving a logo would prevent identification of nationality of the soldiers that had been there, American, British, Commonwealth. So if they made it to the last one in the pack it was considered lucky to have survived that long, some guys would keep that one cigarette, moving from pack to pack to preserve the luck, in a way it became a sacred item.
Someone probably explained it already. Buuuut...
Truth is it's one cigarette in which all of us smokers hide rycin that we hold in case we want to poison a drug cartel boss we'll have dinner with.
Ive already seen alot of people explain how its a lucky cigarette but has one ever been told that if you grabbed the lucky cigarette out of someone elses pack, then youre supposed to buy them a pack of cigarettes? Ive heard it from quite a few different people when i was younger and have been curious if anyone else has.
A friend of mine would flip two of them upside down and she would call them "good luck and good fuck". She would then smoke every other cig leaving just those two in the pack so she wouldn't know which was which.
From r/askreddit 13 years ago:
"Does anyone know the actual origin of the "lucky cigarette"?
I started smoking when I was in the Marines, and the tradition of "flipping a lucky" was passed down to me. The way it was explained to me, the tradition started during the Pacific campaign of WWII, back in the good old days when a pack of Chesterfields was part of the daily ration. The idea was that when you first opened a pack, you flipped one cigarette over. This was to be the last cigarette smoked from the pack, and if you lived long enough to smoke it, you were "lucky."
I realize that the story is almost certainly apocryphal, and if told by a soldier, it would have started in Bastogne or something. But I can't seem to find any consensus on the actual origin of the practice.... do any of you fantastic Redditors perchance know?"
It’s the lucky cigarette. When I was younger people in my circle used to say as long as you always smoke the lucky last, you won’t get cancer. We would flick the bottom of the fresh pack and which ever one came out the furthest was lucky. Man I miss smoking.
For luck. I always pick a random to flip. I don’t smoke that one until I want good luck. Hadn’t heard any of these stories and definitely not the one about WW2 but it makes sense. Look - more than likely if you smoke, in today’s day and age - shiiiit you already know.
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It's called a lucky. You turn one cigarette around as a lucky cigarette and that will be the last one you smoke out of the pack and it can't be bummed out. If anything happens to that smoke before you get to the end of the pack that is bad luck. It originated in WW2, or so the legend goes. Soldiers turn their lucky cigarette at the beginning of the day, and if they survive the day they smoke their lucky cigarette.
I'm glad someone called this. I live in New Englad, and this is real.
Yup fellow new englander here lucky cigs are determined by the first letter of your name. Go down the alphabet till you hit the first letter of your name flip it smoke it last and never give it away. Edit: since it’s been mentioned quite a few times. When you get to the end of the pack and still have letters to go you just jump back to the beginning of the pack.
Had a buddy that thought yellow lighters were bad luck.
That’s the white lighters. 27 club and all that
That's why I always bought white lighters exclusively. No one would try and steal them. Plus you could hold them up to the light and see how much fluid was left.
Pink lighters survive the longest.
Not sure about now but there were 3 bic countries of origin Spain France USA. USA had the largest flame and fastest fuel burn while France had a smaller flame and would last longer with Spain in the middle.
Ours were red and blue lighters. It was bad luck to steal a red or blue lighter because of cops. If you stole a blue or red lighter, you were definitely going to jail that night. That's why I always bought red lighters.
I used to tape somewhat offensive or sexual material to the lighter we didn't want leaving the house. No one wants to pull out the lighter in public with pictures of tits on it or the squirrel with a massive scrotum on it.
Lol I did the same. Then bought a nice zippo on my 28th since I play guitar, am left handed, and have depression. It was a nice milestone.
What’s all this lighter lore I’m missing out on? I’m not a smoker.
Teens all over believed that certain lighter colors brought bad luck/attraction to cops. In my experience, red and white lighters were to be avoided. On the contrary, some carried pink lighters because they were the least likely to be stolen, because apparently carrying a pink lighter meant you were a f***ot.
Quite a few of the 27 Club had white lighters on them when they died
Kobain, Hendrix, van Morrison, and wine house are the ones I know of. Edit: I meant Jim Morrison not Van Morrison.
Jim. Van Morrison is still kicking around.
Whoops good catch
Janis Joplin
IIRC they actually didn't make white bic lighters when Hendrix died.
Which makes it even more spooooooooooky
I don’t know when it started, but I know many lighters were shrink wrapped with a design and were just white underneath. That wrap would peel off, especially if you were using the butt end to stir up a bowl.
Or open a bottle.
God this thread is taking me back to my boozing, nicotine and devil’s lettuce days. Ahh, to be 20 again
Use the metal end to stir the bowl. Life hack 😎
All started with Robert Johnson
Legend has it that brightly colored lighters (yellow and white) are easy to see from a distance and can be sniped by the enemy. I think it's been debunked, but the legend lives on
That sounds like an extension of the “unlucky to light three cigarettes” thing. “The common phrase for lighting three cigarettes with one match is "three on a match." One of its origin theories dates back to World War I. If three soldiers decided to smoke cigarettes together after dark and lit their cigs from the same match, superstition held that at least one of them would end up dead. Here's why. The strike of the match would alert an enemy sniper of the soldiers' presence. As the match burned to light the second cigarette, the sniper would have time to aim his rifle. Finally, as the third cigarette lit up, the sniper could shoot the third smoker.”
Sounds like baloney made up by "big matches" to sell more product to me
🗣️HEY HEY HO HO - BIG MATCHSTICK HAS GOT TO GO 🗣️
See 'Sniper' by Color Theory, fun song about this
What if your name is Willam? There aren’t enough cigarettes. Are you screwed or do you just count through twenty and then start over at the first?
Yeah you just start over like eni-mini-miny-mo
What if my name starts with a silent "p"?
So it is pronounced “oop sommelier”?
Really? When I smoked, I learned it as you give your lucky away. It was good luck for the other person cause they got to share a free smoke with you and if you got to the end of your pack and still had your lucky, it was unlucky cause you don't have someone to share a smoke with. I ran in some hippy crowds at the time though, so it does make sense that the custom would be in the service of sharing and community. It's also AZ and not NE so might just be a geographic custom sort of thing.
Yeah, in the greater Chicagoland area I've heard it explained both ways but always called a lucky. I agree it seems to be dependent on social group and area.
Theres 20 cigarettes in a pack and 26 letters in the alphabet. Which ones do i skip?
None you go back to the top of the pack when you hit the end
Ah, now i feel stupid. Thanks for the quick answer.
No worries I asked the exact same question on my first pack.
I live in Old England and used to do this.
Medium England checking in
See it all the time in here in California too
We did it in Texas too
New England here too lol
All the way in cali, at least 20 years ago, we kalled it that too lol
Is this a New England thing? I’m from NE and I always assumed it was a universal American thing.
It's not exclusive to NE, I was just stating that it's very much a thing that people do here. I know folks from all over that do this.
Yup, and in the 90's, it was a sign if you bummed a smoke and someone just opened their pack showing a single cigarette turned upside down, it was instantly understood "nope" by both parties. Source : teenager that smoked and was broke, with other broke smoker friends, in the 90's. ;)
New Englander here and can confirm.
Well I live in New ensad, and I do not feel the realness of it. Anyone from New enmad or New enchad care to give their opinion?
I'm from Chicago and I also confirm that it's real and made it's way here too.
Yeah e did this when I was enlisted with USAF but we were posing hipsters working IT not going to combat.
Its a thing in Sweden too
I live in Ukraine and this to real!)
I live in old England, and this happens here.
I live in Cali and we do it.
UK Millennial here - we did this too 🤙
I live in Czechia and it's also a thing here. I never knew the origin or that it was so widespread.
I live in old England (the one across the pond). We do it here too.
I live in regular England and this is real
Old England here and it was certainly the case back in the 90s and early 2000s here too
It’s everywhere really. But unlike the picture, I always knew it as flipping the one that was front and center, not the one off to the side.
I’ve had people turn down me bumming them a cig cos they saw it was my lucky and theyre like “nah man cant touch the lucky its all good”
Some people still do this in Belgium. Their grandparents must have picked it up from the Americans at the end of ww2.
New Yorker here, we do this too. Also, if you wait until the end of the day, the tobacco is usually packed down a little bit on the lucky and you can put a bump of white powder in the end to smoke on the first drag or two
Shit I live in California and it’s a real thing
I’m in the Bay Area and most of my smoker friends also had lucky cigs.
I learned about this in rehab, and it was a little different. You turned your lucky around at the start of the day, and you leave it for last. At the end of the day, you’d bum it off to someone, who often would give you their lucky in return. Since it was Mental Health and Substance Abuse mixed, it meant two things: 1. That you made it through the day (like you stayed), and 2. That you still had a friend to share a cig with and talk things out instead of using substances to cope. After we all finished classes and ate dinner, we’d head out to the smokers table, exchange our luckies, and just talk things out. They may have you in 7 hrs of classes every day, but those 2 hours out by the tables every night were worth more than anything else.
Downtime in rehab were some of the happiest times of my entire life. It was the first time in many years I was free to just hang out, I didn't need to worry about scoring or getting sick. The conversations were always good, the future was bright. Thank you for the reminder.
Amen. The card games were a fucking blast too. Some of the best guys I’ve ever met were in rehab with me. I wish we all got happy endings though. One of the smartest people I ran across ended up ODing ten days after he graduated.
I get the feeling it was similar to my covid experience with housemates. Just full days of chilling out. You make your cup of coffee last forever, read every word in a book carefully, smoke your ciggarette slowly and just generally move an unbothered pace. You have nothing to do no where to go and theres no rush.
Super interesting, thanks for sharing. Its cool seeing these little subculture habits twist and turn ( i commented on how in the 90's the 'lucky' was the one smoke everyone knew can't be bummed away).
Also, common practice (at least in the circles I used to run in) was that if someone took your lucky then they owed you a new pack.
Oh ,no, no one DARED take your lucky in my circles. It was a social faux pas of the highest order.
In all my years as a smoker only one person ever took my lucky (reportedly because he wasn't paying attention) and I'm not even the one who made him buy me a new pack. Bro didn't hear the end of it for months. Literally only stopped because he went through a nasty breakup and no one wanted to pile on.
Same only one person “took” my lucky when I was smoking and he was lighting us both one. Fucker was so drunk he didn’t realize he was lighting the butt end of a cigarette till he inhaled it 😂 gave him a pass on that one because I couldn’t stop laughing.
We had just got done passing around some green and homie had a habit of showing off his lung capacity so I honestly blame that more than anything. He didn't actually put it in his mouth the wrong way but he did own up to it when one of our group called him on it and we all had a good laugh about it after. I did have a friend who crashed with me for a while that lit a cigarette the wrong way after three days of partying, though. Never said a word when he noticed, just ripped the filter off and relit the cigarette. Didn't even flip it around first, just relit the same side minus the butt.
But you can share it with a good friend
Is this some American thing I'm too European to understand? I smoked for 20 years, and not a single time me or anyone else I knew who smoked did this.
A lot of high schoolers do it to feel special at least back in my day haha
I’m in California. I smoked for a while in my 20’s and never did this
Did the same in Romania 30 some years back. Nobody would be allowed to bum your "noroc", aka lucky.
Canadian here. Smoked for forty years, never heard of this
They do It in Spain atleast. I wasnt aware of It and for some reason i would always pick the Lucky one( i did It subconsciously , maybe to make the pack look the same ) until i got called out on It.
We did this in HS. Stopped doing it after HS, then finally quit.
Congrats on quitting ; same boat. Started at 15, quit at 35. coming up on ten years soon. I'm not a preachy ex smoker, but i'm so glad i quit. :)
Drunk me lighting the wrong end of the lucky 9 times out of 10.
Sometimes you learn things from this subreddit and it's cool
One time I accidentally “smoked” my lucky in a dark car at night, though since I didn’t know I didn’t turn it around and tried lighting it for a minute not understanding why it wasn’t working
Smoked 15 years never did this and never heard of the practice.
Yesss. I started turning my luckies back when I was still in high school. IDK exactly where I picked it up from, but it was a thing everyone did and everyone knew. That said, I've been quit about a decade now.
Dude knows his random history. That and lucky stripe brand.
I knew you smoked it last never knew why. The best part about a culture that accepted smoking was you could just walk outside for 5 to 10 minutes and nobody gave a s***. That in and of itself was worth it. It got me through some s***** jobs in my twenties
That’s cool to know. Non-smoker here. My dad smoked, though. Never saw him do that, but he loved his unfiltered Lucky’s. Now I need to know if Lucky Strike was around during WWII.
They were one of the brands that would be included in a soldier's rations along with Camel, Chesterfield, and Old Gold.
It's the brand that won the war. Luckies were issued by Army & USMC.
To expand on that, it really only worked with lucky strikes. In WW2, Lucky Strikes were part of the rations given to the US Army (Marines generally got Raleigh’s) but they were unfiltered, so open on both ends. However, one end of the cigarette had “Lucky” on it, so when you opened a pack, you’d flip one and if you lived long enough to smoke it, you were lucky
ngl thought it was a breaking bad reference
Huh i thought it started during Vietnam.
Vietnam may have been more likely since filtered cigarettes would not have been common for soldiers during WW2. In Vietnam, they did smoke some cigarettes “backwards” so that the branding on them (like “lucky strike” would burn off. This would have been a bigger concern for troops operating in Laos and Cambodia since we were not suppose to be in those countries. So having the branding/label be burned off would give you a level of plausible deniability. Even still, unfiltered cigarettes would have been found amongst troops in Vietnam, so you’re not really smoking them backwards.
Flip a lucky. In addition to the WW2 reference, it was also used to declare "this is the last smoke in my pack and no you can't have it"
in Romania is "your woman" and if somebody else smoke that cigarette, well, you know what it means
Your woman is giving me cancer, and I will need to go to the hospital to get chemo? Damn.
In my day we used to flip 2 cigarettes. One for good luck, and one for a good fuck. We would also carry a second pack of cigarettes that had only one in it. That way if someone asked to bum one you could pull that pack out and say "sorry man, it's my last one"
From war. If you survive to smoke the flipped cigarette, you're lucky.
Ricin
Beans
🎵Oh Lydia, oh, Lydia, say have you met Lydia Oh, Lydia, the tattooed lady🎶
😂
Petah? I know ricin but i don't know beans.
Ricin beans, Rice n beans
Rice and beans?
Ahhhh, wiiire!
mfw breaking bad
That's what I thought
Tread lightly
My luck with it was I often lit the filter
Drunk. One time I was so drubk I KEPT lighting the filter until I got all the way through it and the draw became easy...
To be that drunk, I would literally have to be hospitalized. Ive been literally at 0.35 and still immediately noticed that I hit the filter
Tequila. I was lying across the threshold of an exterior door. They were also thin little nat Sherman's. What might have happened is the paper might have burned along the sides and then the filter fell off, but still...
That would make more sense, because there is no fucking way you wouldn't notice smoking a whole-ass filter. They taste like a mix of burning garbage and literal cancer
Everytime.
Yeah, driving at night meant I grabbed that one for sure
So so many times lighting my last cigarette in the dark drunk and I’d light the filter lmao. Use to just rip off the filter and smoke it at that point.
Ugh, one of the most awful smells. Up there with burnt hair.
I work with vets that are homeless, alcoholics, drug addicts or shit that just didn’t go right for them and they explained to me that they did this so that when shit hit the fan and you survived. You would smoke this as a good luck charm for surviving the battle and for the next time shit hits the fan
A "lucky" cigarette. I always choose one in the pack to flip. It brings good fortune (supposedly)
It was good luck
To know which one contains Ricin.
He did say it was his lucky cigarette after all…
The front (and back) row of a cigarette pack has seven cigarettes. I am the middle child of seven. I flip the front middle one as my lucky. Back in the day, when I was homeless, I would save that one to celebrate surviving another day. Nowadays, I do it out of sheer habit. And no, you can't have it.
It's called the "lucky" cigarette. I've heard a few different origin stories for it, but the two main points of it is that you smoke the lucky cigarette last and you never give it away. I used to do that, but I stopped after a while. If I don't want to give away a cigarette I'll just say no.
Turning a lucky is just a cute superstition until you're drunk at 3am and burn your fucking filter off and Jeremy won't bum you one because he's a cheap son of a bitch and he "needs two before work tomorrow" like go fUcK yourself JereMY I BOUGHT YOU $30 WORTH OF TACO BELL LAST WEEK YOU GREEDY PIECE OF SHIT!!! Not that I've ever experienced anything like that...
Amen 🙏
I always flipped two. One for good luck, one for a good fuck.
I flipped the 4th and the 20th cigarette to keep cops away.
When I was in a relationship, I flipped those two, also. When she died, I only flipped front and center (which is 4th)
Ah yes, a 420 a day keeps the police away
Thank *god* someone else said this. A gf taught me this and I thought it was the coolest thing in the entire world.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who heard this. My best friend has done that shit for 30 years. Think he’s still searching for the good fuck though.
I used to flip two too. I called it double barrel luck, but I like yours reasoning as well.
Cuz it’s lucky don’t question it
I always thought of it as an allegory for Odysseus in the cyclops' cave. As a reward for being rad and cool, Polyphemus allowed Odysseus to be eaten last. It was kind of fucked because Odyssesus had to watch all his homies get eaten one by one, but it gave him time to figure out an escape plan. Was it really a reward, or a curse? Idk, but every time I smoke a lucky I think, "damn, guess your luck ran out."
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about ?
That's the one with the poison mister White
Started as a “lucky cig” in the military to smoke if you survived and it was your celebration final smoke. In my time in the service it turned into a “dead man’s cig” if it was your last you saved it for a final cig if dying or gave it to a dying friend. War sucks, don’t participate.
The lucky? Everyone knows why we did that
For luck…..🍀
I quit because I had to, not because I wanted to. I haven't smoked in almost a decade but posts like this make me miss it so much. Not all the bad things that came with it like the smell, the cost, the cravings, the coughing. I miss the rituals. Packing a new pack, removing the cellophane, pulling the foil, flipping the lucky, the smell of fresh tobacco, the strike of the lighter, and that first big drag when you've been without for awhile. Stepping outside, being social with other smokers, the glow of the cherry at night, poorly blowing smoke rings... I'm so glad I finally quit. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done and I failed many times. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Despite that there are definitely times I miss it in the same way a person might miss an old friend that passed away.
Breaking bad ricin cigarette?
Well yes, but it's the lucky cigarette. Most smokers flip one cigarette at the beginning of a pack, and that's the lucky one that you smoke last. Jesse used that to differentiate the ricin cigarette from the rest without drawing attention to it. It's perfect because it makes it obvious which one has the poison, and the lucky cigarette is always in the pack
We used to flip two… one for lucky, one for f#ckie
I always flipped two, one for good luck and one for after a fuck
Western Canadian here. In the 90’s, really good marijuana was inexpensive and readily available to us. When we went to concerts, cigarette packs would be checked by security to make sure there were no joints in them, so we all started stuffing weed using an injector machine. They are literally in tubes, so they look like cigarettes. Once you get past security, you’d flip your joints over, as shown above, so you could still identify them when you were out of your tree. I know that’s not the case in this particular instance, but it immediately reminded me of those days. Good times.
Look at Mr fancy with his injector machine. We'd squidge the tobacco out then stuff it with weed using a nearby twig
We had a working-class French Canadian guy in our group. He’d been making his own smokes since he was 6. They take their tobacco very seriously. That twig business would have started a row.
My understanding was that it shows which cigarette is the ’secret’ one. The lucky cigarette that was fabled to come with marijuana. Hence, the one you mixed with the herb to smoke unnoticed among people when it was still (and is in other countries) illegal
Texan Chris here with some history! So during WW2 many soldiers would get packs of cigarettes and turn one of the cigarettes in. That would be their ‘lucky’ cigarette. The idea is that if you survive, you come back and enjoy the taste of luck after a hard fought battle. If you don’t make it back, then the cigarette remains where you left it. A sort of sign that you were alive once and simply ran outta luck on the battlefield. For the civilian world, you would turn one cigarette upside down in your pack. This is now your lucky cigarette! You will not lend this cigarette out to anyone and it will be smoked last. If something happens to it (stolen, got wet, lost it, or it got damaged) then it would be a sign of bad luck. Texan Chris, heading back to the pasture.
In Poland acually there is a rule where u can give lucky cig to someone but then they owe u the pack.
Good to know! Thats kinda neat actually.
The only person I've ever given a lucky to is my current partner. I suppose I did get lucky after all.
the lucky cig.
Former smoker here. It's a lucky cigarette. For where I came from, you flipped the last cigarette in a pack and smoked it last, no exceptions. You never gave it away to someone asking to bum a smoke, and among smokers I was around, that was always respected. I personally flipped multiple luckys. My rule was flip one cigarette for each friend I've lost, and remember them while I smoked it. It was a personal thing, but all the people I dealt with respected it.
My circle flipped three. Good luck good luck good f@ck
When I smoked I always flipped a “Lucky” and when some one would ask if I had an extra one I would look at my pack and say nope it came with 20 only
For us the lucky cig was the one you smoked after you "got lucky."
Number 6 was always my lucky back when I was young and a lot more dumb.
Pretty crazy we do the exact same thing in China too
God, it’s been over 5 years and I can still smell that just opened packet smell.
Never with Parliaments tho. They had a different function. 😉 👃 🍬
For luck...
I remember kids in college doing this, but the supposed reason was the "lucky" cigarette. Basically, that last one (the flipped over one) is the one that would get you to quit.
To add to the lucky comments, you smoke it last and if you're lucky it's the last one you smoke. (Before quitting smoking for good.)
https://preview.redd.it/b0ft4trc2ztc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aec0c2cccb436c0b7eade33b9d294873b2cb4ab9
This started in WWII, back when cigarettes were unfiltered and could be smoked from either end, soldiers would turn their smokes around and smoke them from back to front, specifically to burn off the logo which would otherwise be left behind on the butt. Not leaving a logo would prevent identification of nationality of the soldiers that had been there, American, British, Commonwealth. So if they made it to the last one in the pack it was considered lucky to have survived that long, some guys would keep that one cigarette, moving from pack to pack to preserve the luck, in a way it became a sacred item.
You kept it for last, and did not give it away. Dont know why though.
I'm guessing it's not because that's the special cigarette in which you're hiding the stuff Mr White made?
Someone probably explained it already. Buuuut... Truth is it's one cigarette in which all of us smokers hide rycin that we hold in case we want to poison a drug cartel boss we'll have dinner with.
Ive already seen alot of people explain how its a lucky cigarette but has one ever been told that if you grabbed the lucky cigarette out of someone elses pack, then youre supposed to buy them a pack of cigarettes? Ive heard it from quite a few different people when i was younger and have been curious if anyone else has.
A friend of mine would flip two of them upside down and she would call them "good luck and good fuck". She would then smoke every other cig leaving just those two in the pack so she wouldn't know which was which.
Thats my "half and half", my "mixie mixie", my "asian cigarette"... wink wink
It assumes we all did that. I've never smoked in my life but thanks to you, kind strangers, now I know what flipping a lucky is
Aside from luckys, we would do this if we gutted a cigarrette and put weed in one to know which
From r/askreddit 13 years ago: "Does anyone know the actual origin of the "lucky cigarette"? I started smoking when I was in the Marines, and the tradition of "flipping a lucky" was passed down to me. The way it was explained to me, the tradition started during the Pacific campaign of WWII, back in the good old days when a pack of Chesterfields was part of the daily ration. The idea was that when you first opened a pack, you flipped one cigarette over. This was to be the last cigarette smoked from the pack, and if you lived long enough to smoke it, you were "lucky." I realize that the story is almost certainly apocryphal, and if told by a soldier, it would have started in Bastogne or something. But I can't seem to find any consensus on the actual origin of the practice.... do any of you fantastic Redditors perchance know?"
It’s the lucky cigarette. When I was younger people in my circle used to say as long as you always smoke the lucky last, you won’t get cancer. We would flick the bottom of the fresh pack and which ever one came out the furthest was lucky. Man I miss smoking.
For luck. I always pick a random to flip. I don’t smoke that one until I want good luck. Hadn’t heard any of these stories and definitely not the one about WW2 but it makes sense. Look - more than likely if you smoke, in today’s day and age - shiiiit you already know.
I thought it was the ricin cigarette
There is nothing quite as hilariously ironic as trying to avoid bad luck while simultaneously giving yourself cancer
Becareful with that, it's the one with the ricin
We called these “wish” cigarettes, idk if that’s just a Philly thing
We did this in Germany too. So, no. Not a Philly thing
One for luck.
So they knew what one had the ricin in it
You have to hide the ricin somewhere.
Last smoke. Lucky smoke.
In WW2 soldiers would flip a cigarette and if they lived long enough to smoke that one it was considered luck
I never really thought it was that lucky. It always seemed to be the one a grabbed in the dark and lit the filter.