I’ll Be at Mom’s for Armageddon
Holidays at Mom’s have been a bummer lately. After sixty years of stuffing Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas stockings, she went on strike and refused to participate. She ordered take-out for Thanksgiving (the Turkey Chop Suey with Yam Dim Sum was okay, but the deep dish Turkey, Cranberry and Anchovy Pizza was less than festive) . At Christmas, she stuffed our stockings with leftover Halloween candy and called it good. She went to bed at 7:30 on New Year’s Eve, daring anyone to come over and celebrate in the dark.
Though all thirteen of us (my siblings, their spouses, offspring and various pets) still intend to show up for Easter, we’re pretty sure Mom is trying to tell us something. But though Mom may eschew the traditional holidays, there is one event for which she will always be the ultimate hostess: Armageddon.
I’ve never given much thought to Armageddon, though watching House Speaker Pelosi and President Bush duke it out recently, I’m thinking that a little disaster planning might be timely. Mother Nature has been pretty bitchy lately too, a kind of atmospheric menopause, spewing out hurricanes and tsunamis and snake-infested droughts. We’ve got the terrorist thing going, Global Warming, and bedbugs biting opera divas. So I figure it’s time to determine my own personal disaster recovery plan, and I’ve got it: I’m going to Mom’s.
Because Mom has crucial supplies:
• Cold remedies, burn remedies, motrin, aspirin, and every kind of –rin you can imagine.
• Bandages for every conceivable body part including a whole box of them that seem to be designed for ear lobes.
• Cold packs, heat packs, and packs that can swing either way.
• Braces for knees, necks, and thumbs plus enough ace bandage to mummify half of the neighborhood.
• Thermometers for every bodily orifice and at least a case of that stuff that really stings (to prove that it’s good for you) to pour into wounds.
Mom’s Q-Tip supply is only surpassed by her stockpile of toilet paper, and you could have a runny nose at Mom’s for decades and never run out of tissue.
And baggies?
Oh my gosh! Mom has a supply of baggies that would make the infectious disease people at CDC gangrene with envy.
Mom has critical communications:
Mom gets at least seventy thousand TV channels.
There are broadcasts from places like Venezuela and Naknek Alaska, some of which are in languages none of us know (but you can learn a lot just watching the pictures). She gets weather channels, shopping channels, and one that focuses on scrap-booking (an apt hobby for an apocalypse, I’d say). This wealth of important information is augmented by the fact that Mom has a TV in every single room of the house. So all thirteen of us could be watching a different channel in a different language to keep track of the demise of the rest of the world.
Mom has ample accommodations:
Mom has a leaf for the dining room table (which she hid when she went on strike, forcing all thirteen of us to scrunch around a table meant for four) which expands the eating area nicely. Mom has at least thirteen thingys that are, or could become, beds (including an inflatable kiddie pool, which is where I think my brother should have to sleep). Mom’s house is a bit weak on bathrooms, only two and a half of them. But I think if we restrict ourselves to core family only and don’t invite Uncle Leo (an easy call since no one likes him), the remaining thirteen of us will manage our restroom schedules pretty well.
Mom’s house is geographically desirable:
Mom’s location (which I will not divulge because if all of you show up, the bathroom situation would become dire) seems relatively safe since there is nothing particularly bomb-worthy nearby. Besides the Super WalMart down the street, there are no strategic facilities anyone would want to commandeer. The nearest fault line is 700 miles away, so a 6 pointer won’t even shake Mom’s petunias; a tsunami would have to travel more than two thousand miles to dampen Mom’s door.
I’ve reviewed the entire plan with my siblings, who quickly elected me to broach the subject with Mom. Our first conversation about it went pretty well I think. And if she ever speaks to me again, I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to iron out the details.