Gas Station

It’s all too familiar; warm air pushes through the car like sails captured in the wind. I stare at the vast desert landscape as it whizzes by me on our way to Los Angeles. A trip that was usually taken during my summer months growing up. I’m now 8 1/2, basically an adult in child standard years.

I’m starting to get anxious. I squirm and sweat underneath a hot California sun while the car hums, rolling over melting asphalt. And I witness the highway mirage as far as I can see — heat waves radiating back into the air like an oven on bake. I see a gas station, and we stop to refresh. Carrie and Marlon, my siblings, bolt for the central station doors and go straight to the candy aisle while my parents talk up a storm with newly met friends traveling in the same direction.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a big red box tucked in a small room on the side of the station and the letters C O K E across the front. I dash inside, reach into my fanny pack side pocket, and pull out 100 pennies; the machine says 99 cents. One by one, I place each penny into the slot, but like a bad joke, each of those dull pennies finds its way back at me. Determined and confused, I don’t give up and keep a nice rhythm of pennies flowing into the machine.

In an appearance, a cherry red convertible whipped up the dust and stops before the doorway. In this movie moment, everything now moves in turtle motion. What looks to be 4 beachgoers spring out of their car as if they were jumping over running track hurdles. The swagger of two shirtless surfers and two hair-flicking, bikini-clad girls walk toward me, and I hear, “Hey, little guy, let me get that for you.” I watch as the machine eats a dollar bill and loudly loosens a can of Coca-Cola. The tin of the metal tag releasing the cans hissing pressure is handed to me, and with a rub of my hair, “There you go, little buddy.”

And like that, A hero is born.