Gas prices have always been a pain in the wallet.
I reject the premise of the “back in my day” crowd that say their gas prices were somehow better because they didn’t account for inflation and the resulting new cash equivalents. No one wants to pay what we pay for gas, but it’s a fact of life and a necessary evil we’ve taken on until our methods of transportation evolve into something new. I, for one, am disappointed we didn’t get the Jetsons-style flying cars we were promised would appear in the 90s back when the sitcom debuted in 1962, but maybe in 2023, right?
You know what they say – with every flying car blotting the sun, there’s a silver lining. While gas prices are awful at the moment, I can safely say there are a number of other fuel sources I’m grateful we don’t have to utilize as we all hold our collective breath and wait for pump prices to reach a less stressful level.
I hope those of you who wanted one are able to get a hold of a Shamrock Shake while they are available. As you enjoy the seasonal, minty goodness, take a small amount of comfort knowing you don’t have to pay that $4.49 per litre to use the sweet treat to fill your vehicle when you make your next excursion through the drive-through.
Keeping with the seasonal tradition, maybe you preferred something a bit stronger for St. Patrick’s Day. If your car needed to be fueled by Ireland’s own Guinness beer, you’d be paying somewhere in the neighbourhood of $6 per litre to keep your booze-cruiser filled to the brim. If you were to take another libation from the Emerald Isle such as Bailey’s Irish Cream, it would cost a hefty $50 per litre to fill up. It’s a sobering thought, indeed.
In the interest of fairness, I should note the current price of Coca-Cola and your run-of-the-mill milk would both run you about $1.50 per litre. However, like with all the liquids we’ve gone through, these hypotheticals are for entertainment purposes only and should never, ever be put in your car in place of gas. I don’t have the mechanical know-how to tell you exactly how that would lead to your vehicle’s demise, but I know enough to say it’s probably not going to end well for anybody.
The price of oil and gas is a nuanced and complex mess of numbers, taxes and trades. I know enough about the way prices work to know I don’t know a lot about them. While the move toward greener solutions and technologies has gained momentum in the past few years, weaning much of the population off of oil is still going to take some time. While there’s not much to do but grin and bear the prices set before us, I suppose we can take some solace in the fact that we could be paying more, but aren’t.
Knock on wood.
@adamEditor18
adam.louis@ ahobserver.com
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