Ok, so gas is like $30 a gallon now. (And yeah, that I care about. Anytime I have to seriously contemplate whether I can afford to take my kids to their gymnastics class because it’s across town, I care.) Who I don't want to hear complain is anyone who recently purchased anything bigger than a Honda Accord. You're driving an '08 Escalade and you want to complain about gas prices? Are you serious?
We bought a 2000 Dodge Durango about five years ago right before rising gas prices. Then, I loved that truck. It fit all my kids, all their friends, and all their stuff. But now? I still love that truck but I hate that truck. It gets like 3 miles to the gallon or something ridiculous like that. We need a full tank of gas just to drive to the gas station to fill it up. It’s that serious.
I can't wait for the day when I can trade that sucker in for a Nissan Sentra. I don't even care about space anymore. The name of the game is MPG. I just want to stop putting all that money in the tank and it only lasts 5 hours. So to that end, I am perfectly willing to squeeze my big @#% family into that tiny @#% car. (Isn't that crazy? I have three kids and that's a big family. My grandmother had 16 kids and that was average.) But if it’s just you, no spouse, no kids, and you're driving a Suburban you just bought last year? I'm telling you right now. You are not allowed to fuss about how expensive gas is. You're gonna mess around and pull up next to a family of six squeezed into a Toyota Prius and catch a beat down.
I’m tired of listening to this whole "gas price" debate anyway. I actually heard some politician promise to work on getting prices lower. What??!! How in the world are they going to “work on” lowering gas prices? I'm not buying it. Everybody took economics in high school. The last time I checked it was still supply and demand running things around here. And these good for nothing SUV's demand the hell out of some gas. So it’s supplied. You just have to pay the price. Unless Wal-mart buys up some oil fields and sends in the big yellow smiley face to rollback prices, I just don't see it happening.
Of course, some optimistic, look for the silver lining, do-gooder always tries to make me feel better by telling me how expensive gas has always been in other countries. I don't want to hear that either. That doesn't make me feel better about how much of my income is going to gas. It just tells me the likelihood of prices going back down is slim to none. If some folks have been paying $4 or $5 a gallon for decades, you think anybody's gonna cut us a break? Misery loves company. Now I'm not saying that's why our prices are so high but I bet very few people anywhere else feel too bad for us.
Plus the do-gooder always forgets to mention all the other things that go along with those high prices in other countries. Like the fact that most people ride bikes or most cars are compacts or smaller or you can get everywhere by subway. If I didn't have to drive, I wouldn't care about gas either. Tell me: how am I supposed to get a newborn, a 4 year old, a 10 year old, and me across town to gymnastics class in the dead of winter in the snow on a bike?
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Tell me what you think. Til next time…
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