Gas Math and other things

The cold front has blown in, and it was awful chilly putting gas in that Bronco tonight. It reminded me of other times I've visited gas stations to get gas on the way home when it was cold. I don't know where else to go with that, really. I just remember getting gas on the way home from someplace. Back on track, though.....

When my Bronco was built in 1983, I think minimum wage was $3.15 and hour, and gas was about $1 per gallon. I have a 32 gallon tank, which meant it cost about $30 to fill it up. At a minimum wage job, you'd have to work just under 10 hours to fill your tank (before taxes have been taken out, of course).

Nowadays, minimum wage is $7.50 per hour. Gas is about $2.50. I still have a 32 gallon tank, and it would take about $80 to fill it up. This means you would have to work just over 10 hours to fill your tank.

I don't know what that means per se, but I found it interesting that about 25 years later the working stiff still has to blow an entire working day (and then some) just to fill his car up.

Something else, too, and this happens to me every night I work the door at the club.

There are several songs that played very heavily when I was the most active in my addiction, especially some of the songs in the background for the Girls Gone Wild ads and some that played while I was working at bouncer at other clubs. In short, they were the soundtrack for my addiction; songs that are permanently set in my mind and that cause parts of my brain to instantly recall images I sought and devoured and burned into my brain while these songs were playing, or memories of who I was with or what I was doing at the time. It sucks, but there it is.

Anyway, whenever these songs come on at the bar, I have to actively fight my first response, which is to figure out a way to go inside and watch the pretty girls dance. Now, I'm not talking about the Cha Cha Slide or the Cupid Shuffle or the Copperhead Road or anything like that. I mean the really seductive kind - the kind that guys (at least me) can't turn away from; the kind that causes you to lose track of where you are, or what you're doing.

See? I'm still prone to it, because part of me wants to write it all out and describe - in great, meticulous detail - the women, and every little nuance of every single move they make. Even now, I still have to fight to keep from trying to describe it, because I know that not only would it be a stumbling block for me, I know some guy (me?) reading this will go back and re-read this again and again, becasue it'll be borderline pornographic - I'll make damn sure of that, beleive me - because that's how much part of me still loves it, man, And believe me - I'd do it full justice here if I'd give myself enough rope to make that noose.

Anyway, the point was how I have to fight not to go inside and feed that particular head of the hydra. I think the fact my desire to describe what I'm trying not to look at probably illustrates the point better and speaks volumes more than anything I could say anyway.

So there's that.

I think that's it for now. I suppose I just wanted to share that with you guys, as if I keep it to myself it might start to try to get the best of me, and that's still a chink in the armor I can't afford to ignore. Fortunately, I still work the door, and generally speaking there's just nothing interesting enough to exploit that particular weakness in the parking lot.

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