Whats that frequent painful burning sensation you feel? Is it keeping you up at night, does it make you go more often? Are you self-medicating more now?
Yeah, I thought so.
So am I.... (take the jump)
I too am guilty of only filling my gas tank half full because the financial and emotional violence of paying for a full tank of gas is too much to bear.
It makes no sense. It's a pre-peak and peri-peak oil full-on-consumptionist cognitive dissonance.
Its one of those stupid riddles wrapped in an enigma stuffed under your car seat, getting stinkier and stinkier every day.
When I pump, I pay cash only, I pay first, and then I literally look somewhere else and not at the very slow moving gauge that is telling me how little gas I am buying for how much.
If I make the mistake of looking at the pump I get the shakes and blank out into flashbacks to the early to mid-90s when I pumped gas in Druid Hills, Atlanta for like 74 cents a gallon (and THAT felt like robbery then, honest).
If I am getting more than $20.00 my pumping lasts longer and so do my flashbacks.
As I clutch the pump-grip, grimacing, my flashback takes me deeper to the days when I only had a scooter and I would wait in line at the gas station to pay the cashier a whole quarter for my full tank. I enjoyed the nasty looks from the motorists.
When the pump jumps as it is killed, I come too. I now have half a tank. Whew, I will live to drive another few miles so I can get to work.
Toward the end of my pay period, I drive home white-knuckled as I stare riveted at the gas gauge. I fear that what I look like is someone watching the wolves in the distance, baying, circling, waiting for my carcass to drop, still warm.
I have YET to get to the point where I run out of gas on my commute.
This is not because I didn't push it to the edge. I have had a few drives home where I had literally 40 cents in the bank account, one dollar 10 cents in my purse for toll and the gas gauge was pegging UNDER empty.
The only way I got home that day was because I was on the cell with my husband who had to reassure me that those gauges are built so that you actually have SOME gas left. It was like he had to talk me down from the edge. It felt like it.
It seems like I have not been the only fool with such silly cognitive dissonance (and at times, literally the inability to cope with the two realities of no money for gas and having to get to work so I can afford has).
The other day on CNN.com, they ran a story "Running on empty: With less in tank, more get stranded" where AAA is reporting that more and more motorists are driving with less and less fuel.
Research from The Nielsen Co. shows that drivers have been making more frequent trips to the pump but limiting how much they put in the tank.
Convenience stores, which sell about 80 percent of the nation's gas, are seeing fewer fill-ups, said industry spokesman Jeff Lenard.
"When the pump hits a certain dollar amount now, you're seeing more customers stop," said Lenard, with the National Association of Convenience Stores. "They're purchasing fewer gallons."
And that means playing Russian roulette with the gas gauge.
In Dallas, Courtesy Patrol -- a roadside assistance program operated by the sheriff's department -- reports a doubling in the number of daily fuel calls from stranded motorists in recent months. Sheriff Lupe Valdez herself recently came to the aid of a mother and her two children who had run out of gas along an interstate.
In some cases, motorists have gotten stuck in the middle of the highway, creating a dangerous situation, said Lonnie Lankford, a Courtesy Patrol shift leader. "It's just breaking the backs of the people, these gas prices," he said.
and ..
"We're seeing a lot of frustrated motorists who are trying to cut corners, and this is one way they're doing it," said AAA Mid-Atlantic spokeswoman Catherine Rossi. "But they're shooting themselves in the foot, or the wallet, in the long run."
That's because perpetually running on fumes can damage a car's fuel pump -- requiring repairs that make a full tank of $4 gas seem like a bargain.
So, their painful frequent burning sensations are so bad that they find themselves brought to a complete halt, brought back to the here-and-now where gas is not a vague vaporous entity but a real thing that has vaporized completely, leaving them at the mercy of strangers.
Yeah, that pain.. it won't go away today or tomorrow. I self-medicate by oblivious daydreams at the pump and then ignoring the gas gauge.
I really do not want to be one of those people at the side of the road.
I can't even afford AAA.
(This is cross-posted to peaknix.com)