“Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.”
-The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I’ve gotten back to getting rid of things in my house again in preparation for this whole moving thing I’m going to do. It surprises (and sometimes shocks) me how easily I can take things I’ve owned for decades and put them on Craigslist or haul them to the curb or box them up for Goodwill. I feel like maybe something is wrong with me, I enjoy it so much.
Then I come to the blankets.
I blame my reluctance to give up blankets on my early obsession with Stephen King’s The Stand, which I first read when I was in the fifth grade and which I’ve reread every few years ever since (the original, not the horrid expanded version). This got me started on my love of apocalyptic scenarios, which eventually led me to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which honed my fear that I may be stuck cold and without enough blankets when the end comes. And so now when I was boxing up blankets to put in my trunk and take away this weekend, all I could think about was how much I am going to regret this when I’m freezing to death after a catastrophic event some will call ambiguous even though it is so clearly an atomic bomb.
Then I got to thinking about why I don’t own a shopping cart.
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (who is coming to TBF this year–WOOOOO!) also makes a good argument for the hoarding of blankets, although it makes an even better one for toilet paper and canned goods. Both of which I also have in good quantity.
The thing is that even if I have a shopping cart when the end comes, I’m not going to be able to fit all this stuff in the cart to carry it around. This is why the end of the world is so complicated. There isn’t a good example out there of how to survive it comfortably without sustaining a major injury or turning into a killing machine. Or both.
This entire line of thinking might partially explain why it has taken me so long to decide to sell my house.
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9 Comments
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!
I am WITH YOU on this. I have way too many blankets, way too many soft, squishy sweatshirts, way too many pairs of thick socks.
My entire winter indoor wardrobe is based on how close to a homeless person I can look with sixty-five layers on and a blanket trailing.
I hate being cold. Also, I hate being too hot.
There’s really no escaping the DISCOMFORT at the end of the world, and that is what I hate the most.
Not that this is relevant but I dreamed about shopping carts last night – LOTS of them. In our library no less.
Tanita, I am comfortable when it’s 90 degrees out. Even when it hits 70, I feel like I need a sweater.
Terri, Curse that Savers.
We were cleaning out the attic this weekend and I found my son’s blankie. Of course, I could not part with it.
I love your post.
Thanks. And some things you just can’t give up, and that’s okay.
growing up in the M.A.D. reagan years, i am always quietly waiting for the shit to hit the fan, i guess: the random canned things that i know i won’t ever want to eat unless it’s the post-apocalypse, the never-ending parade of blankets i keep making, the quiet flame of hope i nurture that, when said fan gets dirty, someone will want to trade my handmade blankets and rugs for a little food and water…
i have the mad survival skills for about 50 years after “the event” because i could kick ass in a barter society with all my random things i can make–but the whole immediate survival scenario? i’m not nearly practical enough to plan for that, even though i live in a city destined to fall in the ocean at some point. ah, well. so it goes!
I feel like I am very, very good at hiding, and that would probably be how I’d make it through that initial part.
hiding is an extremely under-valued skill.
I agree. My ability to hide has been a great coping mechanism in a number of situations I’ve found myself in.