I was standing in the parking lot when a man near me began to swear.

He did it with pizzazz. He stomped his feet and shook a fist in the air. He let loose a long string of profanity that was almost musical. Son of a this and kiss my that. The man stood and cursed and I watched him out of the corner of my eye, wondering if I owed him money.

But the man with the foul tongue wasn’t screaming at me. He was voicing his rage at the gas pumps before which he stood in agony. Going to the pumps these days is akin to going to the dentist. Only the pain is in the bank account rather than the jaw.

I felt that pain, too. A moment earlier, I had inserted a metal tube into my car and through it, dumped most of that week’s paycheck. Watching the numbers climb higher while the gallon count only creeps up is fantastically discouraging.

I say discouraging because I am writing for a newspaper that doesn’t condone a lot of gutter talk. What I want to say are the things bellowed by that red-faced man at the pumps. Son of a this and kiss my that, with a nice Latin beat.

I want to open my trunk and produce the Louisville Slugger I keep there. I want to batter those alien-looking gas pumps in a flurry of swings until they are dented and punctured and bleeding innards onto the pavement. I want to scream until my voice is raw and invent an entirely new language composed exclusively of swear words.

But I don’t. I barely look at the pumps while I am coaxing precious drops from them because there is shame along with outrage.

When we fuel our cars, we are doing the bidding of the machines and the greedy beasts behind them. We are slaves to them. Close down the pumps and our lives will come to a cold, motionless halt. We don’t know any other way and so we swipe our cards, grit out teeth and listen to the unhappy throbbing of cash drowning in petrol.

“This is ridiculous,” we will fume when it’s over. “Something’s got to be done.”

Our friend or wife or third cousin once removed will nod gravely from the passenger’s seat and then we are on our way to the beach or the bars 40 miles away. You fancy you can see dollar-shaped vapors blowing from the tailpipe as you wind on down the road.

It’s ridiculous, but what can be done? Complaining about fuel prices is only one step above complaining about the weather. When long weekends are filled with rain, you want to pound on somebody’s door at 5 a.m. and make them listen to your complaints. But who? Mother Nature? She lives in the clouds, ears deaf to your cries.

It’s the same with the oil people. They are tucked away in palaces that gleam in deserts across the world. Or they are living in opulence down in Texas, in mansions so high above the likes of us, we can’t afford the gasoline to reach them.

Every time the cost of gas takes another gazelle leap, the same wild ideas spread quickly, through the saloons or across the Internet: “Here’s what we do, see? We all stop buying gas from the biggest oil companies and they’ll have no choice but to lower their prices, see? It’s as simple as that.”

Wrong, see?

Economists will tell you that boycotting the big, bad companies in favor of some little guy will end up hurting rather than helping. The little guy will suddenly be selling more fuel than he’s accustomed to and to get more product, he’ll have to turn to the big, bad guys. Guess what the big, bad guys are going to do in response.

That’s right, see? They’re going to jack up their prices.

Swear. You know you want to.

There is talk of people freezing in their homes this coming winter because the cost of oil will render such a basic comfort as heat unattainable for some. There is speculation that people with full-time jobs will start gobbling up secondary employment just to pay for fuel. That will mean fewer jobs available for people who need work, and unemployment will rise. Meanwhile, some businesses will fail because they can’t afford to transport their goods. And on it goes into further chaos.

To most of us it sounds crazy, like maybe a new thriller from that weirdo Ray Bradbury. Serious hardships, we have come to believe, are for the generations before us.

But the shouting man at the gas pumps wasn’t working himself into an embolism for nothing. When it comes to fuel, things are tough all over and getting tougher. We grouse about curtailing our summer vacations (I’m going to Sabattus this year; where are you going?) – but wait until the cold pain of winter is upon us.

I don’t mean to be gloomy, my friends, and lord knows I’m not political. But what my expert (the guy on the bar stool closest to the jukebox) tells me is that the only way to bring down the price of fuel is to use less of it. I considered making the pogo stick my main means of transportation, but stuff kept flying out of my pockets.

From my experience, it is not in our nature to make those kinds of sacrifices. We feel entitled to drive everywhere we go and to keep the house at 75 degrees instead of piling up the blankets. And so I foresee lots of cussing in our immediate future. I foresee more red faces and more red knuckles.

I foresee the Louisville Slugger coming out of my trunk.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. You can e-mail him at [email protected].