Fuelish

I was lazy to do it this time but I relented. Mom parked by the pump and I pulled out my wallet as I stepped out of the car. I hated the fumes. They gave me a headache.

Slipping three crisp RM10 notes through the plexiglass opening, onto the aluminium tray and into the hands of the cashier lady, I get transported back to the Grade 1 classroom of Noranda Primary School, when I am given a piece of purple-ink photocopied paper with identifiable-enough sketches of things that emit a scent. Put a tick next to the things that smell nice, the instructions read. I saw the picture of a gas pump. I left it blank. I saw a picture of a garbage dump. I left it blank too. Then I saw the picture of an insecticide aerosol can. Hey, now we're talking...

As I walked back to the car, the memory reinforced my history of aversion to the nauseating toxin (as in gasoline, not insecticide. Insecticide still kicks @$$). Even Harry Potter uses it in wizardry warfare.

"EXPECT SOME PETROLEEAAAAHHHM!" I hear him cry out in the trailer for the Prisoner of Azkaban. (It sounded something more like 'Expecto Patronum', but when in a life-or-death scenario, pronounciation isn't too high on the priority list.)

Unscrewing the cap where the liquid of all evils was contained and hauling the injection pump out of its storage latch, I inhaled one last breath to hopefully last me through the fill-up.

A timid forefinger pressed on the trigger, and the pump jerked as a surge of fuel shot through in a fit of mechanical rage.

I watched my mom in the driver's seat, bopping her head contentedly to a pinch of overplayed radio candy. Ignorant fool, I thought. To leave me alone, risking life and limb in a sensory numbing environment, should a careless smoker toss a stub in my direction while I stand around oblivious to a gas leak sneaking up on my toes. Or should a careless executive take a call on his cellular phone from a managing director whose capitalistic life wouldn't be too affected by the fatal explosion at a gas station miles away from the safe confines of his mansion downtown.

It was at this thought when I realised that my lungs were beginning to give in to the pressure of air fighting to escape. I looked at the meter - only halfway through. There was no way my breath would hold for the rest of it. I let it out in spurts, thinking of the paracetamol overdose I would probably be indulging in after this monstrous olfactory encounter.

I ran out of breath. I released my ribcage.

I found out that at the exact moment I did so, an overbearing waft of fumes had already crept out of the fuel tank and had been fervently waiting to rape my defenseless nostrils.

It entered, filling my head with the suffocating wrath of flammable hydrocarbons.

It was full of horror. Of despair. Of a thousand lifetimes of human suffering. Of the Numa Numa song and For Love Or Money reruns.

...Then indifference.

Then adaptation.

Then playgrounds. And dandelions. And Kristin Kreuk in a vat of melted chocolate.

A smile crept up on my lips and from them, the universal expression of peace and eternal love oozed out.

"Whazaaaaaaaaaap..."

I finished pumping, slowly opened the car door and collapsed into the passenger seat. I didn't want to talk. Or move. All I wanted to do was smile and make love to the birds and the bees. Life was da shiznit.

My mother shifted nervously in her seat.

"You know, I forgot to turn off the engine..."

"YOU WHAT?!?"

My hippie persona was bludgeoned to death on the spot and life shifted itself back to its state of greasy food, lack of exercise and decay of responsibility.

At least I was alive, and the tank was full.