Bajan Confusion

I’ve been confused a lot lately. I bet some of you are thinking, “Probably forgetful too!” Well it’s true, I am getting old but my mind is fine, at least I think so. I’ve decided to let you determine if I’m a little past prime or over the hill. Here’s my story.

When I was in the 6th grade 51 years ago Mrs. Bench said that we needed to learn the metric system because by the time we finished school the whole world would be metric. She was wrong! By the time I reached 12th grade talk about metrics was already waning. To tell the truth, I have worked at various jobs in the past 42 years before retirement and other than using a socket wrench on my car or bike, I have never used metric for anything. With that said, I’ll admit maybe I should have paid more attention to Mrs. Bench because now I am confused!

I went to the gas station to put gas in my motorcycle and asked the attendant to fill it up (approximately 3.5 gallons). I was paying close attention to the lady pumping the gas with a paper towel in my hand ready to wipe any droplets of gas that may have fallen on my perfectly polished tank. She finished pumping the gas, removed the nozzle and turned it upside down without spilling a single drop and said $40 please. I said “Wait, What $40?” I was thinking it was going to be around $20.00. Confused, I put the twenty back in my wallet and took out a fifty to pay for the gasoline.

For the first time, I did the math. The regular gas price at the pump was $3.19 per liter. There are 3.8 liters in a gallon which means gas is $12.12 BDS a gallon. I’m not sure how the average Bajan can afford over $12 a gallon, maybe that is why the ZR vans and buses are so popular.  Even with the exchange rate of $2 Bajan dollars to $1 US dollar,  gas in Barbados is over $6.00 US a gallon. When I fill up my car its about $125 Bajan dollars. Don’t ask me how many gallons I get because the tank size for my car is measured in liters, I’m confused enough as it is and I don’t want to do any more math!

My confusion continued after I exited the gas station because I had no idea how fast I could go. Why? The speed limit signs are in Km/h and my motorcycle speedometer is MPH. The dial does have Km/h in the inner circle but it’s so small I can’t read the numbers even with my tri-focals.

Maybe I’m just getting old because simple things like going to the grocery store can be confusing. Among the groceries I bought was a a head of cauliflower 1.776 KG @ 13.45/KG for $17.75 bds. What does any of that mean?

Another thing, I can never figure out the price of the daily Barbados Nation Newspaper. The Sunday price is $3.00 and the Monday, Tuesday and Thursday  price is $1.25.  Now get this, Wednesday and Saturday paper is $1.50. If that isn’t confusing enough, the Friday paper is $2.25. Four different prices for the daily Nation paper during the week? It would be easier on an aging brain like mine to average out the price which would make it $1.50 Monday-Saturday and $3.00 on Sunday.

I even get confused at home sometimes. The other day it was very hot day I turned on the air conditioner. Of course the temperature is in celsius so I ended up putting it on 25 and hoped for the best. Fortunately the room did get much cooler but I still don’t know what the temperature is in Fahrenheit.

Today I am participating in a 5K fun run/walk. Now, a 5k I can understand as I’ve run many of them. The route is simple. It  starts at Grannies Restaurant, goes through Oistins past the Oistins Church of God to King Corner roundabout, towards Roy Smith’s bar, past Douglas Shopping Center, St. Christophers Primary School, Alleybs Skills Training Institute. From there is back along Highway U  and back to Oistins to the finish. Maybe its not so simple, if I get lost I’ll just ask someone in my best dialect “Which part is Oisitns?”

Now that you know the whole story, tell me is this a case of an old brain or would you be confused too?