Ode to a gas station

In the past few years, I have done a large amount of driving. Between getting to and from the great state of Minnesota, trekking across the country for a Hamptons-inspired spring break, and discovering the joys of hopscotching from relative's house to friend's house to scenic interstate-side consonant-heavy restaurant, I've seen a lot of road, and, as such, I've bought a lot of gas. My favorite part of this is having a chance to peruse the aisles of random gas stations, admiring the respective humorous postcards, stocking up on the really yummy Snack Well's cookies, taste-testing new coffee drinks, and poking questionable round meats that tend to ooze variously colored liquids. For me, gas stations are almost as good as grocery stores; sometimes they even manage to surpass them, winning me over with either their local charm, or their impressive selection of energy bars and apples.

This morning my roommate Salva kindly offered to drop me off at the place I was being picked up to be taken to school. Given that it was 7:15a.m., that I wasn't exactly sure how to get there, and that it was cold and dark, I very quickly agreed. It just so happens that he is one of perhaps three Spaniards to have avoided being born with his internal clock infuriatingly set to "Spanish Time," meaning that I was plopped down in a fairly empty parking lot by the side of the highway in the cold, dark morning a good 20 minutes before my ride even had a chance of being there. Seeing a gas station nearby, and realizing that I'd yet to actually go inside one since arriving in Spain, I headed toward it.

It's amazing how, after almost two months in this country, and well over a year spent cumulatively in other countries, homesickness can still manage to take me completely by surprise. Reaching the doorway of the gas station, I was suddenly overcome by a desire for a tall cup of gas station coffee. The cup, of course, would be styrofoam, probably the color brown; the coffee would be watery and weak, but I'd add milk and whatever else was lying around by the machine. Carefully I'd stir it with an impossibly tiny stir stick and then snap on the plastic lid, probably splattering mysef a bit in the process. And then I'd walk back to my car, hands pressed around the sides of the cup for warmth, and I'd nurse my terrible gas station coffee for the better part of an hour.

This, of course, was not to be. Despite my greatest desires, there was no rumbling coffee maker waiting to see me off to Periana with a tall cup of sludge. There weren't even energy bars, not to mention anything resembling fruit. If I had wanted, I could have bought a carton of Don Simon boxed wine for under a Euro, but somehow that didn't seem appetizing. I lingered in the relative warmth of the gas station, half hoping that if I stood there long enough a Starbucks might appear. It did not. I miss gas stations.