When I first started smoking cigarettes in October, 1994, I had a cute, little, red Bic lighter, and it was magical.

At that time of my life, I mostly hung out with Greg, a drag queen in disguise; JJ, the philosopher redneck; and Susan, an old, grouchy gay man in a teenage girl’s body, in Greg’s dorm room. We smoked a lot of cigarettes because it was the nineties, and you could smoke indoors if you wanted to.

For about a month, I always had flame in my pack-pocket (currently my phone-pocket). This was something special because I tended to distribute my lighters in random places with random people, so I always depended on the other cavemen for fire.

What was even more amazing was that, if I had to leave the dorm for a chilly autumn, the lighter was there, in my jacket pocket, always. I never had an excuse not to smoke.

On a day of sadness, my Bic flicked its last. If mid-nineties culture was tipping one over for your homies, I absolutely would have. I loved that fucking lighter. I disposed of it with ceremony.

And yet, when I reached into my jacket pocket a few hours later, the cute, little, red Bic was there, and it still had juice. I thought I’d thrown it out, but it was a strong possibility, even then, my memory of the event failed to correspond with what actually happened.

I didn’t figure it out for a while. On my way to class, I lit a cigarette, returned the lighter to my jacket, and slipped my hand inside my pack-pocket to find another cute, red, little Bic.

The whole time I’d had three identical lighters, and I didn’t have a clue. Maybe something magical did happen here. But the spell was broken, and one-by-one, the remaining Bics disappeared.

I quit smoking 15 May, 2007, four days before I turned thirty-one. I have never stopped loving those triplets.