Day 11 of 100 blogs in 100 days

Day eleven of my quest to read 100 blogs in 100 days (while recovering from the self induced coma of watching too much NFL football and wondering what happened to the mighty Titans, my beloved Cowboys rise to former glory and the best zero to zero game ever as the Colts topple the Ravens.)

I've been simmering on "My Life as a...Gas Station Attendant" for several weeks. The blog is "The online journal of a man and his daily and weekly struggles with 40oz-guzzling vagrants, gasoline pump drive-offs, cantankerous coworkers, and eighteen-year-old gangsta potheads who don't think I can spot their fake ID's. It's a Tennessee tragedy, here for your amusement."

This blog is eerie in the sense that I'm not reading a blog per say, but sitting on the bar stool behind the counter with the Gas Guy and observing life as humanity wheels in and out; observing God's creatures walk before our eyes; we should love them all, but do we like them all?

I mean, we all been there.. born "naked, cold and hungry - and it got worse", full of innocence as Cabbage Patch kids, raised in cube farms... There is pain when we are not operating in our destiny, unfullfilled in our jobs or worse yet, to be among America's working poor existing at $7.25 per hour raising a next generation full of dreams and hoping to make a difference. Or some hurricane (physical or emotional) displaces us to a land of promised provision.

That gas station counter keeps moving as a shifting line in the sand. Working class heroes have their dreams and expectations dashed looking for the "Good to Great" companies to work for... only to be sadly myth-taken. Jamie comments, "... I will now have to painfully wait for more [blog postings] in my cubicle made of carpeted wood while servicing morons who I do not have the pleasure to see into their eyes to see what is truly happening in their souls."

Gas Guy explains,

"When I started this job a small span back, I was bitter and sarcastic, and saw people and things only so well as they conformed to the veil of my bitterness and sarcasm. Sometimes that filter produced some pretty funny descriptions of events, but the descriptions were funny because I had taken reality and perverted it to fit my peculiar and unique sense of humor. I still do, of course, but try to at least recognize that that’s what’s going on. When I can’t possibly resist the urge to label things and people to conform to my snarky predisposition toward them, I at least struggle to comprehend that the description is not the event, that people are not reprobates because I’m in a bad mood, nor saints when I am ebullient. They are what they are, wholly independent of what the three pounds of gristle in my skull is inclined to designate them that particular day. Life and time transpire as they do, and my opinion of it changes matters none at all."

I encourage you to start at the beginning, read through all the comments and get a grip on the reality that life does not revolve around thyself. I'm sure that many of the folks we stand in line with at the local gas station will be seated with us at a banquet table in the not too distant future.

As for myself, I am much kinder to those behind the counter; I just needed to harsh reality of Gas Guy's perspective to open the eyes of my heart. I haven't given up on humanity yet -

Picuture source: Cartoons by Cartright