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Be
Prepared!
by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal |
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It
is very hard, in the face of our recent national disaster, to come up with anything
funny to write about – and it almost feels like the wrong thing to do. Kind of
like making armpit noises in church. I don’t want to be the one to do that. Oh,
there might be some good material in a little tornado or a limited flood, but
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath have proved to be no laughing matter.
There
might not be much that is funny, but there was plenty that was good. We all heard
the stories of the not-so-good. I believe most of that was confusion – confusion
on the part of the people, confusion on the part of the authorities and confusion
on the part of the media. Gunshots and fires and violence are considered in our
country to be much more newsworthy than anything uplifting, heroic or fine. This
is one of the real tragedies. I have long felt that for every horror the media
reports upon they should be required to report two uplifting stories. They are
out there and it does not take much to find them.
There are all kinds of
people in this country with all different kinds of priorities. But it is my firm
conviction that the vast majority of our citizenship is kind, generous, empathetic
and strong. We are resilient in the face of tragedy. We are willing to open our
hearts and homes and wallets to our fellows. We have heard many stories of heroism
and love and brotherhood come out of the horror and that is where our attention
should be.
We
would do well to take an object lesson from the experience of so many tens of
thousands of people as well. I have heard lots of good advice recently on how
we should each be prepared for some type of disaster. Just yesterday evening I
learned that we should take several steps to prepare for disaster. We should have
all our important papers together in one place in a folder or something which
will be easy to grab. Check! I have a handsome leatherette zipper folder which
was a gift from our life insurance company. In it I keep all our birth certificates,
shot records, marriage license, divorce decrees, old report cards, coupons for
toilet paper which expired in 1992, recipes for festive holiday dips, some emergency
rubber bands and a lock of somebody’s baby hair wrapped up in foil which I carefully
saved but forgot to label. Wouldn’t want to lose that!
Next I learned
that we should have 72 hours worth of supplies on hand! Good idea. 72 hours worth
of supplies – I have started a list. On average my boys go through one gallon
of milk, a loaf of bread, seven or eight bananas, four or five apples, four packages
of instant noodle soup, half a pound of cookies, a box of cereal and half a pound
of lunch meat. A day. Between meals. I cannot count on keeping anything edible
safe from them when they are in a snack frenzy. Except sardines. Oh, they have
been known to eat them on occasion, but usually only when there is absolutely
nothing left in the pantry except some cat kibbles and a very old box of sugar
free fruit gelatin. So, sardines, saltines, and some jugs of water will have to
do for us. A disaster is not a dinner party – although I have had that go the
other way more than once.
Another good suggestion for disaster preparedness
is to have a couple of days worth of clothes ready to grab, including jackets
and sturdy shoes. I can just imagine this at my house, "Sarah! There is a disaster
coming! Get dressed!" Forty-five minutes to an hour later, after seven or eight
changes, Sarah might have settled on just the right combination of clothes for
disaster surviving – you know something cute, functional, stylish, something that
will look nice in case she is interviewed on the news, something she can dance
in later in case there’s an after party. Okay, Mom. I’m cooooooming!
Then
there’s the problem of money. The man I was listening to on the radio last night
said that we should have some money squirreled away in the house for emergencies.
This makes good sense should we lose our computers and ATMs for a few days. I
have tried it. I used to put all my change – including dollar bills – in a canister.
The kids honed in on that hiding place the very first time they heard the ice
cream man coming while Dad and I were at work. Necessity is the mother of cash
radar. I tried a couple of other hiding places, but if the children didn’t discover
them there was always me. And somebody always needed a last minute $2.95 for something
they forgot to mention the night before. Squirreling doesn’t work so well for
this family.
I hope that we are not faced with a disaster – I hope that
nobody in the world ever will be again – but if we are we’ll be living on sardines
and paying for things with the $59.00 worth of pennies I have managed to save
– but at least one of us will look really cute! | |
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