The Tribune

IF you ever notice, we don’t discuss the price at the pump like they do in the US, where gas prices actually seem to impact elections and vacations. We just pull up, the attendant puts down his phone, ambles up and we say, “Twenty bucks, please” after which the attendant then shouts “TWENTY ON FOUR” as if the cashier can’t see that we are at pump FOUR and needs him to scream because, just like the customer, she can’t read the price on the pump.

It’s no wonder we don’t discuss the price of fuel. It’s not that it’s not there. Somewhere. If you duck down, squint, and search really hard on the pump, you can probably find it in a font you could easily read if you happened to have at least two sets of magnifying glasses with you. It’s there, somewhere, slightly fogged over.

Or you can ask the attendant, who would surely know the price per gallon of the product they are pumping into your hungry tank. They will most likely try to be very helpful and say, “I think it was such-and-such, but that was yesterday so it’s probably pretty close to that today, but it might have gone up, or it might have gone down, but it probably went up, but I’m not sure, you want me to ask inside? You in a rush? You have anywhere you need to go?” (By which time you are thinking, yes, anywhere. I need to go somewhere, anywhere, away from here so I can clear my head and pretend I did not just ask what was the price of fuel?)

Truth be told, the price of fuel is something that has a definitive answer, though in The Bahamas it’s obviously a bit iffy. Ever notice in the States they brag about it – like issuing you a command: stop here, my price is better than theirs over there! The price of fuel is public information, blasted on large rectangular signs with neon lights. $3.83 a gallon for instance. Diagonally across the street it’s a penny cheaper, but you’d have to go up a block, make a u-turn, dodge oncoming traffic, and risk the lives of everyone in the car, including your own, to save one cent per gallon. So you just settle for paying the penny extra for 12 gallons.

Rounded off, it’s only a dime since the penny was discontinued anyway. 

At least the price of fuel has an answer. We may not like the price we pay in The Bahamas, but it’s there somewhere even if we can’t see it without putting our vision to a test that we won’t find in an eye doctor’s office. Maybe that’s what they mean by the hidden cost of fuel.

What I wonder about – aside from why it costs so much – is those random questions that cross my mind from time to time and for which I have no answer. Does it happen to you? 

Questions without answers

Hardly a day goes by that I do not ask ‘Why?’ about some subject or another and the question hangs in mid-air, dangling precipitously, in danger of going nowhere (which is exactly what happens). Why this, I ask? Why that? Is it me or does everyone ask random questions that go unanswered?

So, in a move that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, on a very busy day, not a day when I had nothing else to do, a busy day, I decided to sit down and jot down a few of those unanswered questions. Just to get them off my mind so I am not plagued by silly things for which I have no answer. Now I ask you to contribute either an answer or your own questions.

Here goes:

Parking spaces. Are parking spaces narrower than they used to be? No matter how carefully I try to park, aiming to be a good parker in case anyone I know happens to be looking. As I try to leave an even space on either side of my vehicle, it gets increasingly difficult to open my door all the way without touching someone else’s car or leaving enough space for them to open their door without banging mine. And just in case someone is actually looking, let’s not even talk about what they see – the somewhat compromising physical contortions, as I attempt to appear in control while balancing coffee, cellphone and laptop though squishing and holding in all the middle parts of my anatomy to make myself small enough to fit between opposing outside mirrors. Do you know the feeling? Or the answer – are cars growing or parking spaces shrinking? 

Is English still popular in America? Many years ago, I was doing a magazine story on Ybor City which is a really interesting place in Florida settled by Spanish and Cuban immigrants with a special knack for making cigars. What caught my eye was a sign in a store window “English spoken here.” That’s a good thing, I thought, since to the best of my knowledge I was in Tampa, which, also to the best of my knowledge, was in Florida, which, still within range of my knowledge, remained in America.

But this was Ybor City. It felt like an outpost of a cigar factory, so I understood the clinging to cigar-speak and a need for a sign that said someone inside could speak English in case you need to use a bathroom and want to ask where the facilities are.

On the other hand, I was passing through Orlando recently, not related to any trips involving mice, parks, or rides you should take out a good life insurance policy before boarding. I was at Orlando International Airport, a place that happens to be extremely well-marked, though the one area I was looking for remained a mystery.

So I asked someone who was clearly working at the airport, though it turned out she did not speak English. So I asked another someone, also dressed appropriately for someone working in the airport, who also did not speak English. And a third. And a fourth.

“Doesn’t anyone around here speaka da English,” I muttered under my breath, though I obviously could have shouted it, since no one would have understood me anyway. Frustrated, I left the rental car parking garage and walked back into the terminal where I found a lone person who understood the language which I thought was spoken in Florida—English--who smiled, pointed, and kindly directed me to the place I was searching for.

Maybe I was looking for English in all the wrong places, but doesn’t Orlando boast that it’s the most visited tourism destination in the United States? Shouldn’t there be a law about speaking the official language if you welcome 76.66 million tourists a year, even if you want to speak your own language at home, in your church and community, which is perfectly understandable? Just saying. Should those who are positioned in busy American airports speak English? Anyway, it’s one of those questions that will dangle for fear of asking it is political incorrectness or at best, dumb.

Do clothes still have to come with tags? Now that a genius whose name I do not know has discovered that you can print washing instructions on cloth itself, why do clothes still come with those annoying tags that scratch the back of your neck?

Since we don’t go around hanging people on a Friday anymore, why is today, Friday the 13th still considered an unlucky day? There are potentially legitimate reasons for 13 being an unlucky number, despite some folks calling it their luckiest, but most of us have at least a little bit of affinity toward Friday. So can we please drop the Friday, the 13th day of fear now that the reason for Friday being unlucky no longer prevails? It’s not as though we are still using the last day of the work week to clean up details like beheading. 

 Why does it take one day to get a foreign credit card and two weeks to get a local one? Don’t bother to answer.

 Back to the price of fuel—American gas station signs have prices. Ours have company names. What’s your preference? Just for the record, I drive electric so that’s one question that won’t make my dangling questions list, but it may be worth asking for the majority of folks who still wonder what price they are paying at the pump. 

Have a question that needs an answer? Please feel free to forward it. To where? Your guess is as good as mine.