Pump Number 7

Pump Number 7

I was replaced by the gas station attendant. I refer to her as Pump Number

7 — no particular reason other than I want to.

I have thirty years of experience. She has experience putting twenty on

Pump Number 5.

If I sound bitter, maybe I am. Or maybe it’s disgust — disgust at how

loyalty is rewarded, how experience is discarded, how genuine human

decency is replaced by a girl who tossed my personal effects onto the floor

and walked over them before I even knew I had been discarded.

But I am angry. Yes — I am that.

I dressed as a gypsy for Halloween.

She dressed as a corpse bride.

See the difference.

The root problem did not begin or end with Pump Number 7. It began with

an employer who loved money more than his oath — grandeur he couldn’t

afford, paired with a refusal to do the work required to sustain it.

Being replaced by Pump Number 7 did not truly matter.

What mattered was the lesson I learned.

Yes — a lesson meant for me.

Perhaps I should have learned it long ago. Maybe God knew I was too immature to receive it then.

Each of us has a Pump Number 7 in our lives. Some are recognized easily. Others arrive as wolves in sheep’s clothing, disguised as friends. Some announce themselves with intentions as bright as a neon sign on a strip club.

Life is filled with Pump Number 7s.

They look different.

They come in all shapes and sizes.

They dress differently.

They carry themselves differently.

But the core is the same.

They are sent to reveal truth.

Truth you may ask?

They arrive as warnings for the Pump Number 7s still waiting to enter our

lives. They show us who is real and who is not — who has our back, and

who stands ready to place the knife.

I want to believe God sends us Pump Number 7s

to sharpen us, define us, and humble us.

Pump Number 7 showed up unapologetic.

She wanted my job.

She wanted my place.

And she took it.

I will give her that.

What she did not see was this:

if I were replaced so easily,

so would she.

So no I am not bitter

I am aware

I am observant

I am transparent and clairvoyant

The real truth of it all if a pump number 7 can take our place

The place was never ours to begin with.

only borrowed,

only temporary,

only a role we were meant to outgrow.

What is ours cannot be taken.

What is real cannot be replaced.

What is rooted cannot be uprooted by another’s ambition.

Pump Number 7 was not the ending of my story.

She was the margin note —

the underlined warning —

the neon sign I could no longer ignore.

And now I know:

the people, the titles, the spaces we fear losing

are not the measure of our worth.

They are only the tests

that reveal whether we ever knew it.

Because life will send another Pump Number 7.

Different face.

Different voice.

Same lesson.

She will arrive when we grow comfortable,

when we begin to confuse routine with security,

when we forget that identity built on titles and approval

is a house framed with matchsticks.

And when she comes,

I will not mistake her for an enemy.

I will recognize her as a mirror —

reflecting the places where I still seek permission to belong,

the places where I have handed others the authority

to define my value.

This is the quiet truth:

we do not lose our place —

we lose the illusion that the place defined us.

And in that loss,

there is a strange and holy freedom.

No desk can contain it.

No title can grant it.

No rival can steal it.

It begins the moment we understand

we were never meant to fit into the spaces we feared losing —

we were meant to outgrow them.