2002-02-11 - 1:40 p.m.

On Friday, I finally ran out of gas.

It's really the sort of thing that's supposed to happen to 16 year olds, unused to cars, believing sincerely that, since the car has gas, it will run until you needlessly fill it up again. Pumping gas is a ritual, occaisioned by the needle moving inexorably left, done to placate the universe, because, well, that's what you do. You drive, you pump gas, you drive some more. Until one day you run out, and you suddenly, and forever, know what that means.

The car, silently, and slightly, oh so slightly, stops, like a heart: a brief second of vertigo, as your brain stuns itself into recognizing that something, somewhere, isn't working anymore. Then the gas starts again, pumps, the engine continues, but you know it's begun. It happens again, and you think 'I'll ride it out, I've got enough to make it to the next exit', but then, you thought you had enough when you started the engine to get where you're going.

You think wrong.

You fight, you swear, you try with all your might to WILL the thing to work, but the speedometer, taking it's cues from the gas, spins counter-clockwise, returning you to pre-car days and speeds, putting you back in touch with the grass you used to run on, as you leave the paved, civilized street for the soft shoulder. Welcome home.

This event doesn't really seem to merit the writing I've put into it, but, like everything else in life, it means something bigger when I see it. Most of my life has been spent digging myself out of one hole or another, usually holes of my own design. Life isn't hard enough without having to manufacture a dangerous situation to miraculously escape from, you see. In high school, I let my grades slip in Statistics, getting 2 Cs for the semester, but then pulled a ridiculous all-nighter on the final, winning an A and pulling myself up to a combined B for a final grade. Showed I'd really learned a thing or two about statistics, and how to manipulate them (only the final grade appeared on the transcript). In college, my reading always remained theoretical and incidental, until the time came for tests, when I'd bone up on everything, find quotes for my papers at the last minute, write an entire thesis in the odd hours of the night, punctuated by hot-tub sneakings and hot-pocket sandwiches at Shell. The mania of the last minute, the plane pulling up two feet short of the mountain face was my forte. Wimps bungee jump: I do extreme living.

And Friday, I ran out of gas.

Now, this has, of course, led to a bit of soul searching- I simply can't go on like this. Even my miraculous escapes are getting too close for comfort: my financial situation is so close to ruin, my credit rating so close to sheds, that a day of longer unemployment would have been disaster. As it is, I've bounced not one, but three checks in the last 2 weeks, when before I'd never lost one. My job, while really well-payed, is still a while off from making me solvent, so I have time to reflect on my predicament, and see the bottom of the cliff I so cooly tried to leap. I think, I need to settle down a bit. Just a bit. Untill I can afford to fall again.

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