A few years ago, when gas prices were out the roof, I was naïve. I thought that it wouldn’t happen again — at least not so soon. As prices inch to $4 per gallon and more, I find myself longing for the days of $3 gas.
How nuts is that?
It seems like it’s going to get to the point when we’ll have to decide whether to eat or drive to the grocery store.
One thing I can’t stand is when TV programs do stories about the exorbitant gas prices, then they interview someone in Europe who will always say the same thing: “Well, our petrol has cost us [the equivalent of $5 or $6 a gallon] for years. Americans are just spoiled.”
Yeah, we’re so spoiled. How about if your gas went up to $20 a gallon? Huh? How would you feel about that?
Gasp…wheez…sputter…
As you can see, this subject makes me a bit angry.
I can understand that gas is highly priced in, say, Hawaii. You know why? Because EVERYTHING is highly priced in Hawaii. They’re islands for crying out loud. They have to get nearly everything shipped in, as my husband and I discovered on our honeymoon over a decade ago.
Wait, there was one thing that was cheap there: homemade ice cream. I guess they had already shipped the cows in years before.
But back to Europe…It’s not like you’re Hawaii and isolated from everything. Most of those countries are connected to a lot of other countries. And if I weren’t so bad in geography, I’d know what they are. But that’s another column…
I’ve heard about ways “experts” think we can get through this gas-price crisis.
I heard one theory that was so ingenious I think it should win the Nobel Prize: use less gas.
Who is the rocket scientist who came up with this one? I never would have thought of that!
Or buy a hybrid car.
Okay, well, I’m totally broke from buying all this gas, but I think I’ll drive myself further into debt to buy a car that will use less gas.
Seriously! Who is coming up with this stuff?
Then, and this one I love, take public transportation. Guess what? There’s no public transportation out here in the sticks. There’s no bus that runs from near our house to where my husband works. What’s he supposed to do? Walk?
I guess that means he’ll have to leave for work at 3 a.m. to walk those 10 miles. Then he won’t get home until about 9 p.m.
I’ll never see my husband again, but at least we’ll be saving on gas.
Give me a break.
And it’s not like the old days where if you got desperate for money you could do something normal…like sell blood. Nope, that Red Cross expects you to donate it out of the goodness of your heart. The nerve.
Now people are starting to steal gas. Pull up to the pumps where you pay after you pump, put in some gas, then drive away…
Straight to hell!
I’d never make a good criminal. I could see myself trying to steal gas. I’d sweat profusely, my voice would quiver, I’d look flushed – people wouldn’t know if I was about to steal something or if it was just another hot summer in Baltimore.
I would probably freak out and drive away with the nozzle still in my gas tank. Could you see that? A cop pulling me over because the hose was flapping behind my car like a tail.
He’d ask if I knew that the gas hose was still in my tank. Before he could get the whole sentence out of his mouth, I would crack like a dried peanut and spill my guts – no need to take me back to the station to “break me in the box.”
Nope. I’d confess to that and everything else I’ve ever done wrong in my life including my only foray into a life of crime: the time I stole a pack of gum from Thrifty Wise when I was four-years-old.
But like I said before, that is for another column, another day…
Michele Wojciechowski, when she’s not rolling pennies to be able to buy gas for the week, writes Wojo’s World™ from Baltimore.