Breakfast In Marlboro Country - [Matthew]

That was supposed to be the name of this story. But I can’t write a story that would warrant that title. Let me explain.

Some months ago, I started getting mail from my friends at Marlboro. And the stuff they’ve sent me, you wouldn’t believe: CDs, a pair of steel dice, a lighter, a deck of playing cards... And best of all, none of it with the Marlboro logo plastered all over it. Not only do they have flavor, they have taste. Here’s a tobacco company that’s going places.

So one day I get an invitation in the mail. R.S.V.P. A breakfast with my fellow smokers. The large full-color brochure showed cowboys cooking up a steak over an open fire. Beside the steak, an egg nested inside a gigantic piece of Texas toast. This was going to be one manly breakfast. Just one problem. I don’t smoke. Never have. I finally deduced that Marlboro got my name from Esquire Magazine, similar to how cops have go-to snitches they can squeeze for info with a little pressure and a few bucks. Marlboro saw I fit their target demo and then started a mail campaign that, had Marlboro been a person and not a company, would have put them in the category of ‘deranged, love-sick stalker.’

I decided to book my trip to Flavor Country and dialed the 800 number to make my breakfast reservation. A nice lady asked me a few questions, but the survey (and my prospects for chow on the Marlboro dime) ended abruptly after one question:

“Are you a smoker?”

No, I answered. I could hear her flipping through her pages of responses before she coldly rattled off an explanation that this offer was reserved only for smokers. What? But I thought we had something. What about the letters and the gifts? Didn’t they mean anything? I was crushed. It was then that she landed the knockout punch:

“We also have to remove you from our mailing list.”

And there it was. My many months of playing hard-to-get had backfired, leaving me with a soft pack full of twenty Class A broken dreams. An exile from Flavor Country.

But then the other day, God finally heard my cries. I open up the mailbox to find a mysterious package. What’s inside, I wondered?

Full color Varga-style posters! Temporary tattoos! Booklets on how to bet in Vegas! Swag galore! Apparently someone from the Camel Cigarette Company heard I was on the rebound.

As I looked at all the cool goodies, I reminisced about Marlboro’s ardent courtship, then shook my head in disgust. Selling cancer and emphysema is one thing, but discriminating against me because I don’t smoke? Well, not in my America. I’m putting Flavor Country to my back and pointing my horse toward Turkey. A place where they accept non-smokers without judging us.

I’m back in the game, baby. I’m back.

[end ping]