Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Come 6 AM tomorrow, the rumor says, gas prices will hike to frontiers previously inaccessible to human understanding. Like a fool I hopped in my car at 11 PM tonight, expending precious fuel for the sole aim of obtaining more of the stuff at a bargain $3.04 per gallon. Too bad the pumps were stopped by the time I got to the station.

When I was little, I would look at the gas gauge and wonder what exactly would happen when the needle hit the “E.” This was forbidden territory, where anything past the final notch was inconceivable, but in the past few months my fuel light has been constantly lit. It’s almost like a third headlight, you know?

That’s not really important, though, considering how my car isn’t hidden under, oh, 20 feet of water. We were originally going to discuss how, in that breezy transition from summer to fall, there’s a moment when the end of the year transforms from insinuation into arrival. But, sobering as this may be, natural disasters just do it better.