Yes, We have NO Gas

The world as we know it is ending here in Atlanta. Something very drastic has happened. So drastic that it has caused me to rethink my life and its style and how if Armageddon were to happen tomorrow, I have no plan.

We have NO GAS/PETROL.

I am not kidding. All the gas stations are dry. Yesterday I was driving my parents back from a day of hard shopping at the mall, when my car, Fenway is his name, started to “ping”. “Ping” is Fenway’s way of letting me know he is now getting very thirsty and when I get a spare second over the next 20 miles or so, could I please just throw some gas in the tank. And since he refuses to stop “pinging” until he gets his way, I tend to respond pretty quickly. However, the first gas station I pulled into had all their pumps locked up and signs reading “No Gas”. That’s weird, I thought, never heard of a gas station running out of gas before. Never mind, plenty more stations along this road. But each and every station I pulled into was the same. Pumps all bagged up, notices saying “No Gas” and many even had that yellow and black crime scene tape out and around the station itself to keep people away. Now you know when you see that special issue pow’lease CSI tape, things are not good. Something big is going down. The sight of it instinctively made me nervous. “What is going on?” I said to my dad. “Why is there no gas?” The more gas stations I went to, the more I felt like I had entered some sort of twilight zone. I swear, I was waiting for the sky above to turn black and the wind to pick up to a level that indicated Mr. Armageddon was just around the corner.

I was baffled. Repeatedly I was asking, “What is going on? I just don’t understand this”, because I didn’t. I knew the economy was in recession, but seriously, up to this point I felt it was just a bit of a horror story the media had latched onto in an effort to justify hiking up the prices on commonly purchased goods and to curtail the trend of impulsive spending on fabulous but nonessential items by the trigger happy credit card generation. That was until Wall Street took its big fat nosedive last week and now this, dried up gas pumps.

I am fortunate enough not to have a large portion of my wealth tied up in any Wall Street stocks and bonds. Mine is more tied up in the jeans and shoes kind, which some would argue provides zero return on investment. I happen to disagree. You just can't put a price on looking and feeling fabulous. But this situation with the gas right now, is kind of a big reality check that things are actually worse, or definitely feel worse, than I had previously understood.

My inability to get gas anywhere that day was kind of scary and even though Fenway continued to “ping” about his emptiness, there was absolutely nothing I could do. The next day I heard that one of our local gas stations had managed to get some gas and would be selling it for a couple of hours that morning. So I immediately jumped in the car a drove down there. But it seemed like everyone else had gotten the same memo, cos when I tell you there were several lines of cars that wrapped around every inch of the car park and out onto the street, I am not kidding. The pow’lease where on hand in an effort to maintain an orderly, peaceful system of queuing and acquiring said gas. It was just nuts. I had no idea where any of the lines started or ended so I drove around in fear that I would join it at the wrong point, or cut someone off unawares, resulting in a possible riot like situation. But as luck would have it, Husband called to say another gas station was selling gas a little further up the road, and right now there were only 5 or 6 cars in line. So that’s where I went. And after a short 30 minute wait and a limit of $50 per car, I got gas. I didn’t even look to see how much I was getting charged per gallon. It didn’t matter. Not to me. Not to anyone else in line. We were just so relieved to actually get the stuff we would have paid whatever they asked and more.

Luckily, I have no plans on driving anywhere any time soon. From now on there will be plenty more walking and biking going on and Fenway will only be brought out when absolutely necessary or for special occasions.