Expensive Is The New Cheap

I’m giddy, I can’t help it. I just bought $3.62 a gallon gas! I didn’t even need it. I had over a half a tank all ready but the siren call of $3.62 was more than I could stand. So I stood in line. Twice. Because I am an idiot.

I should point out that before I stood in live twice I had been to Sam's and now possessed a bag of frozen chicken riding shotgun - Which would not have been a problem had I stood in line only once or if I had spent .6 a gallon more at Sam's - Which I wouldn’t have done because I didn’t need gas that badly even though $3.68 is still cheap gas. Remember after Katrina when gas was $2.50 a gallon and we all thought Oh My God! What are we going to do?! It’s outrageous! and then gas got even more expensive because of a hurricane off Mexico and the state went as far as suspending travel by state employees because gas was just too expensive? I just checked my archives and I found an entry that said gas was $68 a barrel  and I commented that the Pirates down the street were charging the astronomical sum of $3.09 a gallon.

Today If I ran across $3.09 a gallon gas I would fill my bathtub with it.

Anyway. I left Sam's with my frozen chicken and went to go put gas in my car. I had to park in the street because the stations’ lot was full and the SUV in front of me was piloted by what at the time I saw as a very stupid person who would not move her car forward! I hated her then, but an hour later when I was still in my car, I could understand how she might have just been in line for a long time and maybe she wasn’t stupid, maybe she had died from asphyxiation. But she was not dead, just stupid, and she finally moved her car up and I was able to get out of traffic and into a line.

And I was happy. My chicken was frozen, the line was almost moving and I was having memories flashbacks of my far off childhood of waiting in line with my mother to get gas on alternate days and how that if only half the cars were able to put gas in their tanks this should have made the lines shorter because there should have been fewer people getting gas, but instead they were always long because everyone filled up their tanks even if they didn’t need to because it was Their Day and they were all but supposed to show up at the gas station or else. And sometimes you would be in line but the station would run out of gas and that would be hugely traumatic.

So I am in line and I am waiting. We’re all waiting. It’s the lines at Crate and Barrel the day after Christmas And the car up at the pump always seems to be unattended because the driver had to go inside to pay and go to the john and buy a coke and screw around and waste time then pay for their gas in pennies... and I took a look at the pumps and they were definitely pay-at-the-pump and yet every other car was left at the pump while it’s driver went inside to stand in line to pay inside. This was disheartening. So we all waited for the driver to wait to pay, which took forever and then we waited for them to fill the tank which also took forever because all the pumps were working simultaneously and this slows everything down.

And I am still in line, and I am having real doubts about my frozen chicken and I am trying to think of a safe place to stow it while I am in line and so I killed some time playing hide-the-chicken and the line creeps along and finally both cars ahead of me leave at the same time! Both cars are faced in the correct direction! They both pay at the pump! Huzzah!

I get to the pump

and my tank is on

the other side of the car.


I get out of line which takes a great deal of effort because there is a car parked in the way and so I am now effectively blocking a pump and the offending car is just sitting there and inside the station in the crowd, I see a figure very deliberately going about her business getting a paper and a soda and visiting with the counter help and being in no rush whatsoever and I want to kill her. She finally goes out to her car and then just sits there, very carefully putting her paper down and getting her drink arranged and making sure her seat belt is not creasing her scrub top and then she’s checking her lipstick in the rear view... taking her time, totally oblivious to all the other cars and to the fact she is essentially double parked as well as being a huge bitch.

She leaves. I get in yet another line. It takes three days. But still? $3.62 gas!