Late last night, Roadguy pulled into a gas station that was deserted except for its lone employee. The clerk was not behind the bulletproof glass as expected; instead, he was standing outside in the damp air — smoking a cigarette.

Now, I don’t know where you grew up or what you were taught about smoking near gasoline, and, unlike Roadguy, your dad probably wasn’t Mr. Science Teacher, vividly informing you of the dangers of fumes and open flames and third-degree burns, so maybe you wouldn’t have batted an eye. But I batted one, and then I batted the other upon noticing one of those chessman-shaped ash receptacles next to the clerk. This was apparently the designated smoking area, about a car length from my pump.

The guy and I exchanged a “hey,” and I tried to forget all I knew about the laws of combustion. I figured that if cars had been exploding on a regular basis at this gas station, it probably wouldn’t still be in business. I started filling my tank.

A Lexus then pulled up behind me, and the driver got out and began muttering to himself and into his cell phone. He left his car running as a friend of his arrived in her own convertible and began to fill her tank. Glancing up at the no-smoking sign, I felt as though I were trapped in a parody of a gas-station safety video: “Light up a cig! Leave your engine running! Make sparks with your cell phone!” What next, a danceline of teenagers with flaming batons?

No one died, of course, and cell-phone use at gas stations is not really considered risky anymore (another link on that topic is here); I’ll have to ask my dad how I managed to survive the other hazards. In the meantime, if you have any theories, feel free to share them below.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 11:49 am and is filed under Scenes and stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.