Column Name: Life is Like a Mop

by Regis Michelena

“Gas Station Teaches Importance of Decimals”

It’s that time of year again: the nights are getting a bit cooler, the scarcity of spiral notebooks is the basis of many a fistfight in the aisles of many a Wal-Mart, and my parents are dancing with more joy than Ewoks at a celebration.

            School has started and my family is rid of me for another semester.

Don’t get the wrong impression about my summer back home. It was a much-appreciated respite from the demands of academia (if you’re still in the vacation mode, that means “school”).

            And because I was deprived as a child, I will take this opportunity to do something that I have never had the pleasure of doing: writing about “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” It begins:

            My vacation began on a very high note. In fact, it was so high that only dogs could hear it. Luckily, I heard the dogs barking at it.

            “Star Wars: Episode II” was released. It was good the first time, which was here in Laramie. And it was good the next night, back in Sheridan. After my seventh viewing, I still want to see it again.

            Now that I have established my status as a geek, I will continue.

            “Summer vacation” is really something of a misnomer, if you ask me. I got a job (a real one - honest) working at one of the busiest gas stations in Sheridan. I authorized so many pumps that I now say “Thank you, pump two” in my sleep. Don’t believe me? Just ask my roommate.

            As much fun as I had authorizing gas pumps, I mainly remember wanting to throttle the living daylights out of every other moron that walked through the door.

            I thought I had met some stupid people when I worked fast food, when I drove through South Dakota last summer, or even that one time that I accidentally walked into a Toto (the band, not the dog) fan club meeting. But these places and events pale in comparison to the sheer magnitude of stupidity I encountered this summer.

            There was the 17-year-old who tried to buy cigarettes, forgetting that he wouldn’t be 18 until November. There were all of the people who either couldn’t understand or even see the simple and conveniently placed-in-plain-sight instructions on all of the gas pumps. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t blamed me for their lack of fueling.

Then there was the guy who couldn’t understand the relevance of the decimal point in ATM transactions. But the “winners” of the “Biggest Idiots Contest That I Didn’t Actually Have” had to be the people from Montana who claimed they didn’t have to pay sales tax in Wyoming because they don’t have one back home.

            If I had the means and the time, I would have found some way to prevent these people from reproducing to ensure that they wouldn’t be able to pass on their genetics or stupidity.

            Don’t take offense yet. Just realize that there wouldn’t be any smart people if there were no idiots. So keep it up guys- I’m depending on you!

            The only other thing that I really did was get my band, Half-Penny, back together for a few weeks. We rocked and we rolled ... or did something that resembled it. It was sweeter than a metric ton of Nutri-Sweet, but with considerably fewer carcinogens.

            Through all of this, I learned a few things. Among them are patience, the ability to say “Have a nice day” to anybody, and the realization that Calculus III has no real applications in any minimum wage job.

            But most important of all, people need to pay more attention. Not just to obviously placed instructions or simple arithmetic, but to the people around them. You never know when a gas station employee (or fast food worker, supermarket bag boy, your urologist, etc.) is going to snap.

            Here’s to a great year.