Believe me, I realize that gas prices have spiraled completely out of control. Every fill-up is like a knife stab "¦ and yet everyone seems to want to make me bleed just a little bit more.

The final back-breaking straw came a week ago, when I was taking a ferry ride to Vermont and back. The ticket seller slipped me a note along with my meager change. Due to the rising cost of fuel, a surcharge would be added to the recently-raised price of each ticket.

I exploded with fury, letting loose a stream of regrettable expletives and -- with a boost of adrenaline -- tossing a Mini Cooper off the deck and into Lake Champlain. Sorry. I'm sure insurance will cover that.

They hadn't even charged me the surcharge yet, and I wasn't sure how much it would be, but frankly I had already been surcharged into submission and couldn't take it any longer.

Already there is a hefty surcharge on airfare. Cruise ships are charging it, too. Not to mention taxi cabs, garbage trucks, trains, moving vans, delivery companies "¦

By the way, we'd appreciate it if you'd leave an extra three cents in the newspaper box each day to offset our fuel costs. Yes, even if your paper boy is on a bicycle.

If they're not already doing it, I expect the police to take a couple of bucks from each crook they have to pick up in their squad cars. Firemen will ask for $10 before turning their hoses on a burning building, and if you want that ambulance to drive you ALL the way to the hospital, well, that's gonna be a little bit extra.

Even when it's not called a surcharge, it is a surcharge.

The cost of mailing a letter is going up, probably to pay for fuel costs. Everyone is buying Forever stamps before the May 12 deadline, but don't be surprised when the Post Office says in six months or a year or two years, tops, that "the Forever stamps are still good for first-class postage but require a six-cent fuel surcharge stamp as well."

The cost of milk and cheese have gone up because, while cows run on methane, their tasty dairy products are delivered by truck.

The cost of a movie has gone up by 25 cents, probably because of the jet fuel used by Robert Downey Jr.'s stunt double in "Iron Man."

The cost of eggs has gone up because, as everyone knows, chickens exist on a diet of pure, nourishing unrefined crude oil.

In a way, I sort of respect the oil companies. They don't charge a fuel surcharge on their fuel.

No deception. If gas costs them an extra 10 cents a gallon, they simply charge us an extra 22 cents and call it "record profits" or "the CEO needs a new chain of Pacific Islands; the old one was getting small."

Apparently none of the affluent people who actually run our country have noticed it, but we're being surcharged out of existence. Not just the lower income people, who already had it bad (and are now being quietly shooed across the border into Mexico), but the middle class, which is seeing its savings and disposable income disappearing.