Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.
Gas gauge roulette
It's little secret that I have hardly lived my life as a daredevil. My name will never rank in the annals of human endeavor alongside names like Knievel, Wallenda, or Maury Plotkin, which is a name I just made up for the sole purpose of comedically undercutting the other two.
There is one area of life's experience, however, in which I have given vent to my wild side, or at least to whatever side I actually have that occasionally does get up and off its side.
Call it Gas Gauge Roulette. Perhaps you've played it yourself.
I clamber into my car in the morning, cursing the fact that it's the morning and that my car is a 2007 Camry instead of a 2017 Lexus and also that it's the morning. As I settle uneasily behind the wheel, I recall two specific facts I had somehow forgotten:
· I am practically out of gas, the warning light having flashed for a good 5 or 6 miles before I got home last night, and
· I am a lazy and shiftless jerk who doesn't feel like pumping gas and (optional) it's really cold outside.
Game On!
Will I desperately and flailingly strive to make it safely to work or other destination without stopping to fill up for gas? Or will I act prudently, fill up the tank, and drive to my destination confident and secure that I will arrive in style and in one piece?
The former, of course. After all, this is Gas Gauge Roulette!
I’ve now gone a mile. The warning light is back on, and likely there’s less gas in the tank than water on the surface of the moon. I pass the first of several gas stations en route. Should I stop?
Nah. I am Wallenda, I am Knievel, I am Maury Plotkin, which is a name I just made up for the sole purpose of comedically undercutting the other two.
Was that a sputter? Did the car make a choking sound? Hopefully that was me sputtering and choking instead of the car. The light on the dashboard is now glowing like the Bat Signal on a night the Joker is carting off Gotham City.
I ignore it.
What's that? The gas gauge itself is now actually speaking to me:
"Perry, you moron, you're riding on fumes! For god's sake, stop and get gas!"