Fill ‘er Down
While waiting at stoplights I keep catching myself gazing in vapid disbelief at the current price of gas. I had thought that I would never see gas be cheaper than $2 a gallon again, and I think the fact that it has continued to fall well into the current $1.80 range is messing with my perception of reality in a really ridiculous way. I pass three or more gas stations during my five minute drive to work and each time that the price catches my attention I have the same moment of "WTF?", in the "what year is it again?" sort of way, accompanied a fleeting desire to pull over right then and fill up my tank because tomorrow it just might be $3.50 a gallon again. Because that could totally happen. Totally.
For as bad as my memory is, I still have very vivid memories of the time I finally started to pay attention to the price of gas. While I drove my family's 93 Chevy S10 during my senior year of high school, my father was the one who took care of the general maintenance of the vehicle - including keeping the tank full at all times. It wasn't until I was away at Radford University and my two close friends, Michelle and Dave, both had vehicles to maintain and budget for with their own money that it became something that I actually had a conversation about it with another person. My first year of college was also the same year that 9/11 happened, which is exactly why I finally started to take note of the price - as after the towers were hit the amount per gallon started to legitimately climb for the first time in almost 20 years.
I specifically remember a time when Dave and I were about to take a somewhat usual trip to Blackburg, in order to pick up Nadia from Virginia Tech for the weekend, and hearing Dave grumble and bitch about how the price had shot up to $1.68 and the following 20 minute conversation about how fucked up that was. In a lot of ways, my recent reality check over something as simple as the price of gas is tied directly to that memory. It has more to do with that time of my life than it does with something as relatively insignificant as how much it costs me to put gas in my car, and it's making my thoughts dwell on a lot of things that usually stay blissfully forgotten.
I could do without seeing the price drop to $1.68.