Are You Going to Give Me any Gas Money? Early Lessons on Considering Others and Generosity

My Brother’s Very Poignant Words Involving Gas Money Coming Back to Me

“Are you going to give me any gas money tonight?” My brother’s words from years ago popped into my psyche one morning on my way to my government job. This happens to you as a writer at the most surprising times. Memories and words of all kinds revisit you as though they were beamed into your mind from outer space like on Star Trek. My brother asked some of our closest friends this question years ago when we were teenagers in Buffalo, NY. Those were great times. “Are you going to put any money in for the gas?”

Friday and Saturday Night Adventures

“Are you going to give me any gas money?” My brother diligently saved up his money in high school to get his first car, a blue Chevrolet Citation, and after that a red Volkswagen Jetta. Learning to drive and having your own vehicle were important rights of passage and status symbols in the early 1990s in Buffalo. Car ownership benefitted not only him, but also myself and our two closest friends at the time whom I’ll call ‘D’ and ‘G’. We became best friends with G in elementary school, and my brother met D at the high school we attended.

A car allowed us to start doing something we hadn’t been able to do up to the point. We could now go out and party! This consisted of going to local college parties, and in some instances, venues that we weren’t old enough, or just barely old enough, to get into. It was all new and it was great at the time. I was around girls my own age during the week, but come the weekend I was in the places with older ladies. The soundtrack for those nights consisted late 1980s and early 1990s hip hop and R&B music both in my brother’s car and at the parties.

G was my age, while D was from my brother’s high school class and was a few years older than me. He went away to college at a prestigious university in New York City. D partied all the time in the City and wanted to party whenever he came home for visits. G wanted to party every weekend. It became a routine eventually where G would call our house on Friday afternoons and ask my brother if we were going out. We did not have any concrete plans until we received this call. Eventually the call culminated in a key question from my brother. “Are you going to give me any money for gas?”

Liquid Gold

“They have money for beer and weed, but they never contribute anything to the gas or the tolls!” Sometimes we would travel to the nearby City of Niagara Falls to party. This involved tolls for use of the Grand Island bridges. This added to my brother’s overhead expenses if no one else contributed. My brother never got on me about this, interestingly. Maybe it was because I was his ‘little bro’. Or maybe also, because I didn’t have a job at the time.

A gallon of gasoline cost less than $2 back then up, and much less in the southern states. It’s laughable now as a working adult man earning a living. Gasoline for my car is just one of the many expenses of life. As young men in our late teens and early twenties though, petroleum gasoline, the lifeblood of cars, was a considerable expense and someone had to pay for it. This one resource, which our country was always at war over around the globe, was one of the keys to life in our country, and it was the key to our weekend nighttime adventures.

Petty Pocket Watching or Larger Implications?

My brother’s actions could be misconstrued as ‘Pocket Watching’ in the modern urban dictionary. This term signifies the monitoring and policing the money of others. It’s just plain envy and hate in some instances. In others, it’s seeing individuals have access to luxuries and pleasures that you don’t. The person may have borrowed money from you in other instances and hasn’t paid you back, while visibly splurging on themselves. Finally, they may be asking you to do something while not pitching in, in any way, in this instance contributing gas money.

This goes beyond our early adventures in the 1990s. Friends, relatives and acquaintances of all kinds assess one’s level of generosity and foresight. The late Kevin Samuels emphasized this when I met him. Did you bring anything to the family gathering, the family reunion, or the holiday dinner? When you were invited, did you contribute anything to the barbecue without being asked? In other instances, did you bring a bottle of wine to the dinner you were invited to? Have you gone on a trip you don’t have the money for while expecting others to cover you? Generally, have you thought about compensating the person you’ve made a request of in any way? Have you contributed any gas money in this instance? The gas money in this story is also a proxy for generosity and foresight in this situation, important qualities in the adult world.

Reflections on Our Use of the Time

I hope my brother and our friends laugh at this. I’m certain that they will. Those were innocent times and, in some ways, an informal right of passage. I would not understand the significance of it until much later in terms of social class and the people who were at those college parties, nightclubs and house parties in relation to how we were raised. It was exciting, but I wasn’t comfortable socially in those days talking to females and even dancing. I wanted to be social. I just didn’t know how; though our friends D and G seemed to have it down to a science.

Did we collectively wasted a lot of time and energy spending money and staying out late at night? I ponder this a lot when thinking back to that magical era. They say you gain perspective and wisdom with age. Some people do, while others don’t. Fifteen years later after discovering the Rich Dad Poor Dad book series about financial education, money and wealth building, I wondered where my life would’ve been had I spent that time learning about investing and getting a return on that same money we were spending going out to the Western New York nightclubs and parties.

I know that some skeptics will read this and argue that as teenagers we didn’t necessarily have the capacity to learn about such things. However, we do know now that many youngsters have the aptitude to learn such things, but simply lack the teachers. But that’s a different topic for a different day. What about you? Could your younger years have been better spent?

Closing Thoughts on Gas Money and Late Night Adventures

“Are you going to give me any gas money?” I’m going to close this trip down memory lane here, which is also a reflection on early lessons about consideration for others and generosity. I decided to maintain some anonymity for my brother and our friends in this piece. This essay is an example of my writing style which blends together humor, history and lessons about life; at least in my nonfictional pieces. I do have some ideas for fiction as well. People who read my writings should always walk away laughing and thinking.

Thank you to my older brother and our friends D and G for those memories. D and G weren’t bad guys. We were all just young. There are many more stories I could tell about those times—like the time one of them tossed that empty 40-ounce glass bottle out of my brother’s car window while on the Grand Island Bridge. We were drinking Olde English or St. Ides malt liquor, just like the rappers of our time. That bottle danced around on the guard rail before crashing to the ground.

“HEY,” my brother, the adult of the group yelled as the three of us laughed hard over the music playing on the radio. That was until we saw ominous red and blue lights flashing, causing us to go silent and my brother to pull off to the side of the expressway. We were surely in trouble for that bottle.

“Can I see your license and registration? Do you know why I pulled you over Mr. Dunbar? Your driver’s side tail light is out,” the officer said as we all sighed thinking we were in trouble for the bottle. “I’m giving you a ticket, but if you get your light fixed within 10 business days, you’ll just have to show proof that it’s fixed and you won’t have to pay anything,” the officer concluded before sending us on our way into that Western New York night.

A Quick Plug For My Book

If you’re unfamiliar with me and my writings, I am a self-published author and I wrote a two-part story about how playing sports teaches us lessons about life. I think some form of this short story appears in part two of The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story which is forthcoming. Part one is available for sale now. You can purchase signed hardcover and paperback copies here at the Big Words Authors Store. The ebook, hardcover and paperback editions are also available on Amazon and IngramSpark. Please consider purchasing a copy for yourself or someone you know. Wherever you purchase a copy, please leave a review.