There are many aspects of many cultures that I don't understand.

Around here, Skoal and Copenhagen, um, "smokeless tobacco", as

it is politely called by the industry, but known as "snuff"

to the between the cheek and the gum crowd,

is very popular. What I don't understand is women, sometimes

extremely attractive women, who not only go out with these

guys with the "worm dirt" in their mouths, but even marry them

and go out and buy the stuff for them.


I ate a Marlboro cigarette for a dollar on a dare once in

high school. I never forgot that taste.

My stepfather chewed some real chaw called "Union Working Man"

when I was a teen. I took a bite of that pucky ONE TIME. Yuck.


But the worst thing, to me, is why someone with half a brain

would refer to something that they put in their mouth

as "snuff".

That's supposed to go in your nose.

A brand or two of it is still found in the tobacconist's,

as well as the old-fashioned brick-style chaw.


There is also this "urban" habit of buying flavored "cigars",

peach, coconut, chocolate, and mango, pulling the "tobacco"

out and filling it with another burnable substance,

or dipping the "cigar" in a fluid and then smoking it.


Grown people, dressed fairly well, driving almost new respectable

rides, rolling up to the inconvenience store at 3AM to get

a "Blunt" or a "Perfecto".


Then there are the suspect types, the ungrown people, trapped in

a perpetual youth, dressed like rappers, talking like rappers,

with diamond-capped fangs and pimped-out rides (a lowered Explorer with spinning hub caps, anyone?)

who roll in at the same time as the respectable bunch and

demand the same thing. One "cigar" at a time.

Rarely a whole box.


Recreational drug culture.

And the store where I work doesn't carry rolling papers because

it might encourage the wrong kind of customer to shop there.

Go figure.

They keep the brass scrubbing pads and the tire gauges

well-stocked, though, don't they?


And they sell beer by the twenty pack.


But they won't sell wine or malt liquor.



Go figure.


These are a few of the things that confuse me.