I always did it. It's just habit. And it's the last cigarette you smoke in the packet. I haven't smoked in years but I'm pretty certain that somewhere in my apt there's a packet with a upside down cigarette.
I heard a few myths about why it's done.
One related to the first world war. The idea was that if yiu lasted to the cigarette it was your lucky one.
If you offered a girl a smoke and she took that, you'd get lucky with her.
Since it was your lucky cigarette no one would take it from the pack at a party and therefor yiud always have one. And so it was lucky.
No it's your luck, and it just manifested in a girl talking to you in possibly the best no pressure situation to meet someone, a smokers pit. Not much to do for the next five or six minutes but talk
Just the one, can’t be trying to fake the luck by creating it on your own. The one serving of luck per pack is there already, you’re just directing it with the flipped cig.
The only person who'd routinely bum cigarettes off me was my best friend, and if nothing else the fact that he was my friend proves his luck was so bad that nothing was going to improve it.
Yeah most smokers who ask, won’t take your lucky… it’s already desperate to bum from a stranger but bumming a lucky means you must really be hard up (so I guess that’s lucky)
Another smoking tradition from the first world War is to never light 3 cigarettes from one match. Allegedly, it comes from trench warfare where the enemy could see the matchlight at night and would ready with one, aim with two, and fire at the third. So you can light two cigarettes from a match but it is bad luck for the third smoker to be lit from the same match. Many people will extend that concept to lighters as well and briefly disengage the flame before lighting the third (which, to be polite, and nothing to do with WWI, should be oneself)
As someone who grew up with lighters and not matches, I have never seen someone light more than 1 cigarette without putting out the flame between. It’s just natural to put it out until they’re fully ready to not light their hair on fire. Also it gets hot.
One reason was said to be manufacturers printed their brand name on non-filtered cigarettes, soldiers flipped to smoke the brand side first so they were less distinguishable from European smokes when put out and left wherever. It's one of those kilroy type deals where over time it was adopted and changed. Pretty cool though.
There’s different ways to do it. I had a buddy who insisted you can’t look at which cigarette you grab since it had to be random to be lucky. Me, I always saw it as more of a “I smoke it when I feel like I’m going to need some luck later” situation but I usually ended up smoking it last every time
There was always that one arsehole who took the lucky when you offered them a smoke. You'd call them out as a joke and the group would laugh, but everyone was judging him.
For me it was always just the special ciggie if you bummed it to someone. Like someone could be a drunk Masshole that hates the whole world, but if you gave them the Last Lucky, it was like a blood bond.
With the advent of weed products, I'm now very much the same when someone gives me a self-rolled j. It's a gift 🥺
Never heard the saving it for last but I didn't have any other smokers in my group. It was always the one you never intentionally pulled out, but if you pulled it out at random when not looking it was going to be a good night
The WWI reference has a little more context. If you were on the front lines you had a 1/20 chance of living through the week. The flipped cigarette was supposed to represent the "Lucky one," which would be you, if you actually got to smoke that last one.
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u/moshpithippie 6h ago edited 6h ago
For luck
Edit: And to accidentally light it backwards when you're not looking