Remember the good ol’ days? No, not when candy bars were a nickel and your parents and/or grandparents walked 10 miles to school, in the snow, uphill both ways. (Thank you, school buses.)

I am talking about the good ol’ days when a drive to the mall five minutes away didn’t cost you $37.50 in gas money.

Those were the days.

I vaguely remember a point last year when, after weeks of gas being 89 cents a gallon, I would get upset at paying a dollar for a gallon of gas.

Right now, the thought of a gallon of gas for a buck would be almost as nice as both basketball teams winning the national championship. Almost.

The gas prices have been soaring the past few months.

The national average is around $1.36.

Even gas at that price would be a welcome sight in Ames after being more than $1.50 for too long now.

As a college town, it should be mandatory that our gas prices be at least 20 cents below the national average.

Come on, we have students selling plasma left and right, not to mention various other things they could be selling, just to be able to put gas in their car.

If gas prices get any higher, people might start selling spare kidneys and various other organs on the black market just to be able to drive home for a weekend.

Some people want to blame oil companies and OPEC for purposely reducing the supply of oil specifically to raise prices.

OK, that’s a good argument.

Some people want to blame President Clinton for increasing gas taxes to try to reduce the deficit. Also a reasonable argument.

I am convinced, however, it is some elaborate scheme designed by Hawkeye fans.

To them, it’s bad enough that the Cyclones are having such a great year and have made it to the Sweet Sixteen, but the fact that Cyclone fans flock to anywhere our teams play to support them and give them an extra home-away-from-home-court advantage is simply too much for them to handle.

They have convinced themselves that if they can somehow raise the prices of gas high enough, they will keep Cyclone fans from following our teams all across the country and therefore take away our teams’ crowd support.

As if anything could stop ISU fans from doing what they have to do to support the Cyclones.

This seemed like the obvious reasoning for the high gas prices to me.

Then I realized that this would be far too complicated of a plan for Hawkeye fans to carry out.

I was then forced to agree with the oil company and OPEC scenario for high prices. Maybe that does have a little something to do with it.

Whatever the reason, how can Americans fight the rising gas prices?

We could always refuse to buy gas ever again.

That probably would work. However, I don’t see everyone not buying gas in the near future.

We could all go out and buy electric and/or solar-powered cars. Unfortunately, there are three obvious problems with this plan.

One, who really has the spare cash laying around to buy an electric or solar-powered car when we can’t afford to pay $1.50 for gas?

Two, if you do have the extra money, where can you buy one of those cars?

And three, what happens if you get your solar-powered car and you need to run to the grocery store at 2 a.m. and there is no sun, or what if you have an electric car and you forget to plug it in at night?

How’s that for an excuse?

I can’t make it to work today because I forgot to plug in my car last night!

A last solution involves an e-mail I am sure many of you have gotten recently.

The e-mail calls for a “gas-out” on April 8 and 9.

This simply means don’t buy any gas on these two days and hope it will scare the oil companies into lower prices.

I don’t know if it would really work, but I don’t see the harm in trying.

Just make sure you gas up before then; otherwise you may get beaten with clubs by overzealous “gas-out” fanatics.

That could get ugly.

On a happier and completely unrelated note, congratulations to the ISU men’s and women’s basketball teams on great Big 12 tournament wins and for making it to the Sweet Sixteen.

I look forward to watching both teams win the NCAA Championship.

It’ll happen.

I asked my Magic 8 Ball, and it said “it is decidedly so.”

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Jenny Joanning is a junior in journalism and mass communications from Norwalk.