The 2 Shortage

There are shortages of a lot of things lately, including coffee, water, fish, and most of all, oil. The latter has caused the price of gasoline to soar as of late, creating now another shortage that makes it hard to find out what the price of gasoline is. It is the 2 shortage. Gasoline stations are running out of 2s to indicate their price with. A month ago, a typical price board may have read $1.79, $1.89, and $1.98, with no 2s required. Nowadays, a typical pattern may be $2.12, $2.22, $2.32. That requires seven 2s! Do gasoline stations have enough 2s for a pattern like this? Or even worse, a string of three $2.22s? Apparently, many do not. I see prices like $2.3[] out there, where the brackets indicate a missing digit. So for some time to come, we may be confused as to what the price of a grade of gasoline is. Now oil is something that is supposed to get in increasingly short supply soon, as the world nears the peak of world production. But the 2 shortage should resolve itself in a year or two, when the prices start moving away from the 2.20 range. Until then, don't be surprised if when you go to the counter to pay for gasoline, the attendant will say, "Do you have a 2 we can borrow?"