An Exercise in Futility

A long time ago, a young boy drove his new car to a gas pump. The numbers on the sign read "1.49 9/10".

Many years later, he drove his now beat-up old car to the same gas pump. This time, the numbers on the sign read "2.49 9/10".

The boy, not so young anymore, dug deep into his wallet looking for the extra $25 he needed to fill his gas tank and realized he didn't have it. He spent that extra $25 on rent.

After all, the landlord had raised the rent by another $100 that month.

The boy sadly filled his tank only half way, knowing that he'd be back at that gas pump sooner than he'd like.

But a strange thing happened that day. The company the boy worked for, where he'd spent every day for the last 7 years producing wingnuts, announced it was closing and moving all production to China.

After all, the Chinese can produce wingnuts at 20% cost.

So the boy, now freshly unemployed and worried about next month's rent, returned to his apartment and opened the classified section of the local paper. With a pen handy to circle worthy candidates, he began scanning through the "Help Wanted" section. Ad after ad for "Work From Home" and "Senior Care" were skipped over as he searched for something in the field of producing wingnuts. It didn't take long to finish scanning through the section.

After all, there were only enough ads to cover half the page.

The boy grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat in front of the TV. He flipped through miscellaneous channels, looking for something to take his mind off the situation at hand. He settled on cartoons while he drank his beer. He knew that he'd be ok because the government had just extended unemployment benefits.

After all, his anti-depressant was in the driver's seat, not him.