I don’t know what kind of conversations you had around your dinner table growing up, but ours were generally about disasters. Mother Mary could make a disaster out of anything. Our kitchen was an accident waiting to happen. I reprint below her most important warnings, in case you’re sitting in your breakfast nook, blissfully unaware.
If you put too much spaghetti on your fork, you’ll choke to death. If you don’t chew your spaghetti twenty times, you’ll choke to death. If you talk while you’re eating spaghetti, you’ll choke to death. Bottom line, spaghetti leads to perdition.
Spaghetti isn’t the only killer. If you load the knives into the dishwasher with the pointy tip up, you’ll fall on them and impale yourself. Also you’ll go blind from reading without enough light. Reading in general ruins your eyes. If you eat baked beans from a can that has dents, you’ll die of botulism. This was before people injected botulism into their faces. Nowadays, the dented can will kill you, but you’ll look young.
You should know that electrocution, a go-to Scottoline hazard, will result from many common household items. You’ll be electrocuted if you use the phone during a thunderstorm. If your nighttime glass of water spills onto your electric alarm clock, you’ll fry in your sleep. In fact, any small electrical appliance, given the chance, will leap into the nearest sink to kill you. Trust me, blow dryers lie in wait. Your toaster has murder on its mind.
A closely related disaster is fire, and almost anything can start a five-alarmer. Birthday candles. Lightning striking the house or the car. The stove left on. A cigarette butt tossed unpinched into the trash. Oddly, nobody in my house worried about smoking. If you smoke, you’ll be fine.
Exercise is lethal. If you play a sport, the ball will hit you in the breasts, presumably deflating them. You’re a goner if you run with scissors or sharpened pencils. Swimming less than an hour after you eat is out of the question, but if you want to play it safe, better to wait until tomorrow. And if you don’t listen and sink like a stone, don’t come crying to me.
It’s your funeral.
As a result of my valuable childhood preparedness training, I’m the lady stockpiling milk, eggs, bread, rock salt, and snow shovels before a storm. And during the anthrax scare, I was first in line at the hardware store. I bought the requisite cord of Saran Wrap and a gross of duct tape, with which to seal the house, and all of it sits in my basement, at the ready. The deadly cloud of anthrax never came, and for that you have me to thank. I pre-empted it. I scared anthrax. I had enough Saran Wrap to protect all of us, if not keep us fresh for days.
Now that you know how prepared I am, you can imagine my dismay when I read something recently reiterating that all manner of disasters could happen-wildfires, hurricanes, and tornados-and I should go online to test my “readiness quotient” (RQ).
Uh-oh.
I’m terrified to report that even though I unplug my blow dryer after each use and load my knives correctly, my RQ score was a 0 out of 10.
I knew I should have studied.
The report said that the average RQ score for Americans is 4, and that only two other people in my zip code had taken the test. Here’s where I went wrong, so you can learn from my mistakes:
Not only did I not know how to find the emergency broadcast system on my radio, I couldn’t even find my radio.
I don’t have a disaster supply kit, and duct tape doesn’t count.
I don’t have a “Go” kit. I have only a “Stay Home And Wait It Out” kit.
I don’t have a “family communications plan.” Honestly, who does? Communications are hard enough, but family communications are impossible. You have a better chance of surviving a tornado than communicating with your family.
In event of a disaster, I haven’t established a specific meeting place, but that’s easy to choose. The mall.
I don’t drill my family on what to do in an emergency. Scream Hysterically was not an option. Nor was Hurry Back To The Mall.
Nor do I know first aid. Evidently, a box of assorted Band-Aids, even the kind with the antibiotic, isn’t enough. This surprises me. When the earthquake hits, my money’s on Neosporin.
So you know where this is going. I suggest you log on to www.whatsyourrq.org, test yourself, and get your act together before the apocalypse.
See you at the hardware store. I’ll be the one in the gas mask.
In a gas mask, I look young.