Thou mayest be beset by shame if thou doest it not
July 28, 2008 (Monday)
On Friday night around 9:00 p.m. I was returning home after visiting with Troy and Ruth, enjoying a DVD movie and a very tasty dessert with them at their home. As I neared a service station near my residence here, I decided to fill up the gas tank. So I stopped and got the pump started.
I decided to set the little doohickey on the nozzle to its slowest setting, because I had read we get more accurate readings on the pump that way. It took a lot longer to do it slowly. Towards the end of the session, I looked away to the next pump where a customer had stopped to fill up his scooter bike. While I was looking at him, the pump I was using completely filled my tank, but it didn’t cut off. I felt a small stream gasoline hit my shirt and looked at the hooded hose at the nozzle. A small stream was being jetted from each side of the hose. I stopped it as quickly as I could.
Now, the moral of this story. If you decide to use the slowest setting on your gas pump, keep your eyes on it, because when the tank fills it may not create enough back pressure to trigger the automatic stop.
Oh, the guy with the scooter? He drove in when I was about halfway through pumping gas into my tank, got off his scooter, took off his helmet, walked to the cashier inside the convenience store, paid for his gas, came back out, put his helmet back on, and pumped gas for about 15 seconds. He left with a full tank. I was still pumping. I only put a little over 9 gallons into my tank. Since gasoline had gone down in price Friday, the 9.109 gallons cost only $35.33. The first church I pastored paid me $25.00 per week. Maybe next time I can offer the gas station a trade: a sermon for $25 worth of gasoline!