Saturday, April 7, 2012

When the Wrong Way Feels so Right

In days of old, cars were fairly equally divided between those with the gas cap on the right, and those with it on the left.  As time went by, however, car manufacturers figured out that many drivers prefer to have access to their gas tank on the driver's side, because it's more convenient than trying to cajole your wife into filling the tank just because the opening is on her side.  Or something along those lines.

In response to this evolution of cars, gas stations have moved from having all cars feed through in one direction, with cars parked on the side of the pumps that correspond to their cars' design, to allowing cars to pull up in either direction, so that all pumps are fully utilized.  Apparently military bases didn't get the memo.

At my last base, as well as my current one, they insist on having arrows directing the cars to pull up in one direction only.  If there's one thing worse than sitting in line to fill up your car with gas, it's sitting in line while several pumps sit unused.  Ok, there's probably several things that are worse, such as sitting in line waiting to fill up a Suburban, or sitting in line with a broken radio that you can't switch channels or turn off and a radio station glitch causes the song "Macarena" to be played over and over again, but you get the point.

So today I broke the rules and pulled my car around into one of the unused pumps on the left.  And I must say I felt no guilt at all.  Although I do feel a bit guilty about getting Macarena stuck in your head (make sure you do the dance moves with it).  Sorry!