I left work with the fuel meter covering the orange "E" line, a hair from resting on the illuminated peg. So I headed on to job number two with 45 minutes to spare, when I contemplated crossing the bridge to get gas. Yet the problem with this plan, I kept forgetting as I continued east, was that I really didn't know how to get to Jersey from there. And with a serious need for gasoline, I risked running out and getting stuck, with 30 minutes before my shift.
If I did run out of gas, I mulled over, well then I'd just have to call Taylor. No--class. Dad? Work... My boss, Nina, that'd work. But how funny, first I chose my friend. Most 22-year-olds would probably dial mom, but me? If I got into a rut, like a car accident, (God forbid, and as long as I didn't need hospitalization,) I'd call Tay, Coady, Sabs and Ash in that order most days, the varying schedules taken into account, but general accountability, common sense and usual availability and proximity the prime discerning factors (no offense to anyone, this is not the order of how much I like you-- in that case my brother would come in last. And we all have our strengths and weaknesses.)
My thoughts return to the immediate issue; the fumes my tank's emitting, sputtering the engine, barely inching me to the gas station down Big Oak Road, let alone some cockamamie idea that I'll even make it across the Delaware.
I'll call my boss. So I don't seem so dependent... On... my friends? Because I don't really ask too, too much of my parents. Not since the divorce, and not in these kinds of situations anyway. At the same time, I am a needy friend, and there's only two reasons I can attribute this to-- I don't trust my parents, and and my parents encouraged me (more negative though,) to become this independent ideal, yet I still crave some sort of validation, or something needs to be filled. That's probably Freudian or whatever any of those great psycho-what-have-yous would say.
It's not that I don't believe my parents love me, or would be willing to help me, I just have too many childhood memories of being the last kid picked up from soccer practice, long after the lights shut down. In the sixth grade, my mom was supposed to pick me up from a birthday party at Core Creek Park in time to go to Sesame After-Dark with my friend Leah, but she couldn't seem to locate the particular pavilion at which we were, and eventually, my dad on his way home from work came to my rescue.
And I hate to bother him, the busy worker bee that slaved on for hours of overtime so we could move to a proper, more pristine hive in the cul-du-sac, only for the queen to abandon him.
He never (though sometimes there were exceptions,) picked me up from youth group or practices; we mostly found our own way home, Coady and I. My dad only made it to one or two games a season. I'm not bitter or upset, it's just something I accepted: just was what it was. And truth be told, I preferred not to have them there. From dad, too much pressure. "Good game, but man, you coulda had that pop-up!" Mom, too much the opposite; "Your team doesn't really do much at all to help you out, do they... Oh well, there's always next time!"
I pulled up to the gas station on the corner where Tay once told me to turn to get to work and wished she had just given me back the book which we use for correspondence, so I could write this all down. But I'm glad I couldn't, so I was forced to be less candid about my real feelings surrounding the people in my life, though they all might hate me for it like David Sedaris' family, for exposing them as he saw. If you're not sure that what I'm saying is true, or have definitively decided it is not accurate, let me tell you, it's not. Truth is relative, and my character and situational portrayal is defended by literary license.
I pleaded with the universe that no one would pull up to the Gulf or whatever the damn brand petroleum was I poured into the tank and that read on the sign, for I only put 5 dollars on my card. And thank God I made it, I'd later find out my boss was off that day and I couldn't have called her. I'd head to Burlington after work and fill up, but right now I am busy and I don't need to fill my tank, just enough to get me by and across the river.
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