Tanks For Nothing!

Ann: You wouldn’t believe what happened to me up here bringing Hannah to school.

Pam: Is everything’s okay?

Ann: Yeah, I’m just about $48.00 lighter than I was last night.

Pam: You were mugged!?

Ann: In a manner of speaking. Someone stole the gasoline from my rent car while I was parked overnight in the hotel across from campus.

Pam: Wow! I haven’t thought about that in a long time.

Ann: You’ve heard of such a thing?

Pam: Oh sure...back when I was in high school. The Catholic girl’s school I attended was right next door to the Catholic boy’s school. When gas prices started really sky-rocketing, we girls would find our tanks, which we’d filled up that morning, empty in the afternoon.

Ann: I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school every penny counted. I bet you girls were angry.

Pam: I wasn’t allowed to work during the school year, so I was on a strict gas allowance from my father. For a couple of weeks I had to go back to him for the gas card again and again. He actually sort of suggested I might be using his card to fill up my friend’s tanks, charge them at a discount, and pocketing the cash! I was outraged, not to mention not nearly that creative.

Ann: Hey, he was complimenting your brilliance. Too bad you didn't think it up. Was the same thing happening at the boy’s school next door?

Pam: No. That was our first clue. This was way before there were security cameras covering every parking lot. When our gas started to disappear, our security consisted of a couple of nuns from the AV department squatting in the bushes with those huge old video cameras perched up on their shoulders.

Ann: That’s quite an image. Did they catch the theives on tape?

Pam: Actually no. As soon as the boys appeared with the siphon and went to work, the nuns were so angry they dropped the cameras, snatched the boys up by the ears, and dragged them across the parking lots to present them to the Jesuits.

Ann: But they didn’t get the evidence on video!

Pam: What could be better then a couple of Dominican nuns as witnesses? The boys didn’t even bother to deny it. My dad bought me a locking gas cap anyway.

Ann: I guess those boys were out sick the day the Jesuits taught ‘Thou shalt not steal’.

Pam: You wouldn’t believe how the boys justified it! They told their Dean of Students that they thought it wasn’t so bad because they were using the gas to take us girls out on dates.

Ann: Now that's creative.

Pam: From then on it became part of our girl’s school vernacular. We’d say, “I only had a couple of eighth-tank dates with him.” Or, “It was a half-tank wedding.” Even our twenty-fifth reunion was billed as a “Full-Tank Event”.

Ann: Well I’m not buying a locking gas cap for a rent car I’ll only have for another day and a half.

Pam: Look at it this way…Hannah may end up with a couple of quarter-tank dates in the next few weeks!