Fill er up please...

“I hope to someday live in a world where we all remember which side the gas tank is on.”

I saw this the other day and had to laugh out loud.  It’s fun, try it sometime.  Laughing out loud.  Especially around a bunch of strange people, and just say, “you had to be there…” Or if you want a really good laugh go to a public restroom with a stopwatch and clipboard and when someone comes out of a stall, click your stopwatch and write something down.  LOL.  See I literally did it! 

Anyway, I have done it.  I have done it several times.  Pulled the car up to the pump on the wrong side.  And had to look like an idiot driving around in a circle till I figured it out.  I laugh at people that do this…I am like good Lord, how do you not know what side your gas tank is on?  Well, I do it all the time, so obviously it is easy to do.

Of course that little saying brought back a memory that makes me LOL every single time, but I am pretty sure you had to be there.  Since none of you were, I will paint the picture as best as I can.

It was the summer of my senior year of college.  I was taking summer classes at Carl Sandburg College so I could get done and get out of Illinois as fast as possible.  I had a waterbed.  They were really the in thing for a while but I had one because of my arthritis.  Some doctor convinced my parents that I needed the heat and water for therapy, but anyway…

My father was and still is a firefighter.  This is back in the day when if there was a fire, the phone would ring a steady ring at all the firefighter’s houses.  Remember it was before pagers and walkie talkies. 

I am sound asleep.  Because sleep is important at this age.  I have class in a couple hours; I am not getting out of bed until I absolutely have to.  Funny, I still do that.  Anyway, sound asleep, the “fire phone” rings.  And keeps ringing.  And I can’t figure out why my father is not answering it.  Mom was at work.  It will ring until someone picks up or until the phone wears out.  I am screaming words I will not put on here, rolling around in this water bed, trying to get out of it to answer the damn phone.  When I do, it’s my father.  I AM PISSED.  Really Dad, you wait till I roll out of this thing to pick it up?  Until I listened some more.  He was the one requesting the fire department.  Jesus is my house on fire and he decides to let me know the same way the rest of the town knows?  “Yeah, this is Jim Buckman; I need fire trucks at the shed, NOW.”  Good Lord, now I think the shed is on fire, fearing for my Dad’s life, I bolt out the door in my jammies, which to this day are still shorts and a t-shirt thank God.  The shed is shut up, the gas tank is on fire, and at the door to the shed sits my Silver Thunderbird (she was a beauty) with the gas nozzle and hose STILL inside my car, with fire running out of it.  Two fires, no Dad.  Out he comes screaming at me to get away from the house.  All of the electricity to the house is about 20 feet away, so in my head I imagine a line of fire going to the house any minute now and blowing this beautiful brick home up.  Where the hell would you like me to go?   The shed is about to blow up because you drove my car to it while the car is still on fire and I can’t go in the back yard because that is where the gas tank is burning and if I go out front, I have to stand in the middle of Route 97.  I am literally in a death trap.

I am going to die.  Before I finish this summer class.  Before I graduate college.  This is not how I pictured my life ending.  Just then the sirens wail and here come the fire trucks.  Luckily we live close to the fire house.  You know that feeling you get when you know something bad is going to happen, that overwhelming feeling that things are about to get worse?  Well they did. 

My sister had a dog, a golden retriever named Levi.  Why he was at our house, I cannot recall, but he was and the second he heard the sirens he came out of nowhere, between my legs, taking me down in a blaze, ha I said blaze, of arms and legs.  For reasons we may never know, I grabbed his collar, and he proceeded to drag me through the part of the patio that was all rocks and cement, all the while, my Dad is screaming “stop him.”  Uh, duh dude, what exactly does it look like I am doing?  I stopped him.  At the cost of road rash covering every inch of my body.  I am bleeding everywhere and look as if I just dumped my motorcycle on the highway.

The fire department arrives, the fire is put out, and nothing explodes.  Dad is beyond embarrassed.  I mean here are all of his peers and he has to explain that he was filling my tank for school and just simply took off not realizing the hose was still attached.

I have to shower before school since I am covered in dirt and blood.  That was one of the most relaxing showers I have ever had…not.  I arrive at school, waiting in the hallway for the instructor to arrive to unlock the door, trying to hide all my body parts so no one would see when a classmate arrives and stares at me for the longest time.  She never said what happened, she never asked if I was okay.  She just stared and after about 30 minutes she says, “I know you don’t know me, but they have counselors here for situations like this.”  Apparently I looked battered.  I laughed out loud and said, “No I am okay.”  She said “no one should ever have to get treated like that.”   Again I laugh out loud and say, “Seriously I just got drug around my yard by my sister’s dog because my Dad tried to blow the house up while I was still sleeping.”  She said, “It will be ok, my uncle is a cop.”  I said, “That’s cool, my Dad is a fireman!”  We never spoke again.

Maybe someday we will live in a world where we will not have gas tanks to remember which side they are on.  Until then, don’t forget to remove the hose and nozzle before you drive away.