Not Yet High Enough

Take it easy, all you stoners out there, I’m talking about the price of gasoline. I have not been reticent to express my opinion of those who drive gas-guzzling behemoths in defiance of reason, but I’ve observed their idiocy compounded by the fact that the majority of them insist on driving ten to fifteen miles-per-hour faster than the posted speed limit. That’s right. The guy who’s complaining about having to spend a hundred bucks to fill up his tank is the same one burning it up as fast as he can. Some of us are old enough to remember the implementation of the double-nickel as the method to conserve gasoline back in the seventies. But guess what? People who didn’t feel like obeying the 55 mph speed limit flaunted it with impunity. That was also the era when small cars with better mileage started appearing with greater frequency, but the return to bigger engines and higher speed limits belied the sincerity of Americans to seriously conserve. My theory is that when gasoline hits $10-15 per gallon, a kind of rationality is going to dawn upon the mindless. Only when an hour or two’s wages spew out their criminal tailpipes will some of these twenty-first century Neanderthals catch the spirit of conservation.