America's Gas Problem

This isn't a post about farts (apologies if you're looking for fart jokes here, not today) or even gas really (apologies if you thought I was going to go off on how we need to use less gas).  It's a post about my frustration with the new gas containers.  I grew up in the 90s, during which time my dad taught me how to do basic things like mow the lawn.  He had a very simple gas container that is still in the shed at my mom's house.  For all I know, it could have been his father's gas container before it was his.  It is durable.  It has always worked properly.  It has never failed.  It is very simple to use, even for a child.

I bought my own house a few years ago, and naturally I needed to buy my own lawnmower and my own gas container.  The lawnmower thing was simple enough.  I have a small lawn, so it takes about 20 minutes to mow the entire thing with a push mower.  I found an inexpensive one with a Briggs and Stratton engine.  Easy enough.  But I couldn't seem to find the gas container I wanted, which is one like Dad had.  It has two holes in it.  One hole is where you uncapped it and poured the gas out of, and the other is the vent.  But every place I went had this terrible looking thing that looked like it could never possibly function properly.  I went to Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, the local Hardware Store (Goody's).  None of them had what I was looking for.  I didn't understand it.  Did this weird looking thing that I would have to actually read directions in order to use work that much better?

I finally asked a worker in one of the stores if they had what I was looking for.  They did not, nor could they or anyone else.  In the name of environmental protection, the Government/EPA had passed new laws and regulations regarding what could legally be sold as gas containers (dafuq?).  I wondered if one person somewhere had somehow misused the old container and destroyed something.  Nope.  Turns out, there were concerns about vapors escaping from the vent, air quality, spills, smog...  Look, I'm all for helping the environment, but I was skeptical that this new container could help anything at all.  But what choice did I have?  Unless a store broke the law or I came across one at a tag sale at some point, I had to buy this thing.  So I did.

I read the directions on how to use it.  It didn't work quite how it was supposed to.  It was even worse than the complete piece of plastic crap it appeared to be.  In fact, pretty much every fucking time I used it, I spilled gas.  It got on my hands, it got on my grass.  I know I'm not the only one either.  I guarantee you these things have made the environment much worse overall.  What the hell were wrong with the old ones that worked and were made far better?  The ones that didn't come with instructions because you didn't need them?  Who got paid off to turn something that has never been a real problem into something that turns simple tasks into a headache?  Everything smells like gas.  My grass smells like gas.  My hands smell like gas even after washing them for several minutes.  It's a good thing I don't smoke cigarettes.

So finally, somehow, this monstrosity of a contraption in my shed ended up getting to the point where one of the crappy plastic mechanisms must have gotten stuck, and this has caused it to actually work significantly better.  I've figured out how to avoid gas from dripping out of it, and since I'd probably end up breaking it if I tried to force the disassembly that's supposed to occur after each use, I just leave it as it is.  There's something disconcerting about there not being a vent where there should be one though.  I hope that if Donald Trump gets elected President, bringing back the old gas containers will be one of the ways in which he plans to make America great again.