Opus 2022-233: On the Street: The Idiot Light Is Not On

My walk started out like many others.  Down the street I saw a neighbor talking to a car pulled to the side of the road.  After a few steps I thought it looked like my wife’s car.  After a few more steps I saw it was.  That led to a tangent.  I knew where she was going and what she was doing.  A natural connection is the economy and how it effects us.

You don’t see the connection?  Well, it had to do with my wife expressing her concern about how we were going to make it with prices going up the way they were.  Still don’t see it?  I have learned not to worry just because my wife is worried.  Much of this has come from 47 years of marriage and finally catching on to how she thinks.  I have been hearing all my married life how we might not be able to eat this month but somehow we have never gone hungry.  I finally realized that the reason there was no money was she paid things early.  For example, in California the property taxes were broken down in two payments.  She would insist on paying the whole thing in the first installment and sometimes pay that a month ahead.  No money left.  See how that works?

So I have developed my own way of measuring how bad the recession is and how tight things are getting with inflation.  You can call it what you want, idiot lights, Baloneymeter, Litmus Test, WWJD.  It is the point where I will start worrying.

Which brings me to her car by the side of the road.  She has a daily ritual of driving to the nearest Sonic and getting a drink and then driving home to place it on the counter where it gradually joins the room in a common temperature.  The issue with this is that the nearest Sonic to us is about 14 miles away.  I figure with the time the car idles in the drive through lane and the two way trip we are talking about two gallons of gas.  Add it up.  In a good week she does this seven times.  That is 14 gallons of gas.  As long as she keeps doing this I will figure that we are not going hungry.

Now do you see the connection?  Simple when you think about it.

homo unius libri