Last week, I ran out to the supermarket in my wife's station wagon and noticed that the tank was empty. I stopped to fill it up, and while the gas was running, washed all the windows with the little squeegee thing. When I heard the gas pump click off, I glanced over to see how much and nearly had a heart attack right there in the self-serve lane. It said $57.

All across this country, you can hear the anguished cries of Americans as they gas up their cars, watching money they planned to use for other more fun purposes, like food and clothing, go into their automobiles. And it will get worse as we're all packing up the family cars for summer vacation. Economists have complicated computer models to help explain why this is happening, complete with supply and demand curves, but the real answer is much more simple: We're a country just chock full of chuckleheads.

Let's face it. We've known for decades and decades that there wasn't all that much oil in the world, and that most of that oil was controlled by folks who don't like us very much, and if they got even half a chance, they'd stick it to us big-time. When this whole situation first became clear to us way back in the 1970s, and once we realized what we were up against, we decided to do ... nothing.

When gas prices started to go up, instead of making more fuel-efficient vehicles, or investing in public transportation, or maybe trying to figure out some other way to power our cars, we all ran out and bought ourselves huge monster trucks. These behemoths are capable of dragging huge stumps out of the ground, or transporting thousands of pounds of boulders. Of course, few of us ever have to pull out tree stumps and the heaviest thing most of us carry in the back is a 12-year-old. Even with soccer equipment and a water bottle, a typical 12-year-old weighs less than 110 pounds.

Now, of course, we've come up with another solution that doesn't make any sense at all. We're going to make our own gas, out of corn. Sounds like a good idea, until you realize that it takes so much land to grow corn that we couldn't be self-sufficient in gas even if we planted every single square inch of land in this country, including your front yard, with corn stalks. Oh, and then there's the other problem: We might have a lot of corn in this country, but that's because, of course, we eat it. If they take all our corn and turn it into gas for our cars, there won't be any left to eat. A box of Corn Flakes will cost $87. We'll be using Fritos corn chips as currency.

There are other, smarter ways for us to get our fuel. We can boil down stuff we don't want anymore, stuff that we actually have trouble getting rid of. They can make gas out of trash, weeds, sewage, even leftover turkey parts. All those solutions make sense, and are the kinds of things anyone with half a brain would do. Not us.

The really frustrating part is that we never solve any of these problems because, even though we're a nation of halfwits, the people who run things for us are really, really smart. We never got more fuel-efficient cars because the big shots in the car industry didn't want to spend the money. We never invested in alternate fuels because the big shots in the oil industry didn't want the competition. And we'll probably start making billions of gallons of gas from corn, not because it's a good idea, but because some people are going to make billions off the whole deal.

The politicians in Washington, of course, have a plan. They're not going to find new sources of fuel, but they're going to give us a "Gas Tax" holiday so, for a little while at least (election time), gas won't cost so much. They must think we're idiots. They're smart that way.

Me, I've decided to stop worrying about it. I'm just going to plant my front yard with corn and sit back and watch it grow. I don't have much else to do, seeing as I can't afford the gas to go anywhere. When the crop comes in, I'll be rich.

Until then, could you lend me a few Fritos till pay day?