Pump Rage
Thoughts of violence at the pump
The machine seems to open its slit of a mouth wide for my debit card, hungrily devouring the digits. Sliding the pump into my gas tank receptacle, I feel like the other end of the hose might as well be connected directly to my wallet.
I squeeze the handle and the numbers start rotating. It's like the total opposite feeling of seeing fruit symbols rotate on a slot machine. With the slot machine, while it's rotating you're hoping and wishing that when it stops, they match and you walk away with a big pile of the casino's cash.
With the gas pump, you just want it to stop so you can still walk away with some of your cash.
As the pump reaches $10 and I realize that I've only pumped two and half gallons of gas in my car, I start thinking about the large coffee and scone I had to give up in the morning. Starbucks is posting losses because it seems everyone else also dropped the morning coffee in order to afford the 'Texas tea.'
As the pump clears $20, I start thinking about some fat bejeweled Saudi prince sitting on a crushed velvet pillow, sipping imported water from a solid gold chalice thinking about adding that extra wing onto the palace with today's oil receipts.
Then my mind drifts to the oil exec I saw on a morning news show last week defending his company's record profits. That guy probably hasn't pumped gas in years. His driver handles that.
I look around at the other patrons pumping gas and they all seem to be sporting either the vacant, concussed look of someone who survived a bombing or the wounded, resentful expression of a long time postal employee wrongfully terminated a day after he purchased a new deer hunting rifle.
As the pump rounded $30, I began thinking that maybe I should purchase a locking gas cap. I've read that gas siphoning is on the rise.
As $40 clicked on the pump, I began thinking about how I could siphon my neighbor's gas.
When the pump hit $50 and kept going, I thought about some articles I'd read recently that tried to explain that $4 a gallon gas was a bargain. The pompous pontificating authors adjusted the price for inflation and compared it to what Americans paid decades ago. They even pointed out that the Brits and Norway pay more than we do.
As I pumped dollar after dollar into my tank, I thought about countering their intellectual arguments with something so simple anyone could understand it: a punch in the mouth.
Then I'd tell them that decades earlier people were getting punched in the mouth just as hard and that, when I was in a foreign country, I'd both punched and kicked a guy. Then I'd ask them if that knowledge made their mouth feel any better.
The gas pump stopped at $60.32. That's a cell phone bill. It's a credit card payment. It would feed a village of Sally Struthers' kids. For me, it was three quarters of a tank of gas.
I contemplated using the receipt to wipe the tear in the corner of my eye, but just decided to go. Peace.
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NOTES:
ARRRRGHHHH!!!! Where will it end? With us barreling down desert highways in various contraptions wearing body armor and sporting Mohawks fighting over combustible engines and gas like Mad Max come to life?
How does NASCAR survive? Will thousands of spectators keep driving to racetracks to see race car drivers burn 91 gallons of gas each just to drive around a racetrack? Why not just make a new sport where thousands flock to a stadium to burn huge piles of cash?
Hey, maybe we’ll start walking more instead of driving. And will the fact that we’ll end up walking more help our obesity problem?
Will we regale our astonished grandchildren with tales of a bygone era where families had actually multiple vehicles? A time when family camping trips meant loading up a car and driving to the mountains instead of camping out in the back yard? A time when sixteen years olds received cars for their birthdays instead of bicycles?
And if Al Gore knew that the internal combustion engine was our biggest challenge as he wrote in 1992’s ‘Earth in the Balance,’ why the heck didn’t he do something about it in his 8 years in
Where the heck are the flying cars? Where are the conveyer belts? Hello? The future is now and we’re still driving gasoline powered vehicles. Something tells me Big Oil has had their hand in slowing down our evolution.
Or maybe we’ve come full circle and its time to go back to riding horses.
IF YOU'D LIKE TO CHECK OUT THE DR BLOG THE OTHER SIDE, YOU CAN READ OF MY RESPONSE TO A LETTER TO THE EDITOR BLASTING A COLUMN I WROTE ON BARACK OBAMA.
IF YOU'D LIKE TO CHECK OUT THE WADING IN BLOG, YOU CAN READ MY REVIEW OF THE NEW JESSE VENTURA BOOK, DON'T START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME!
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