Sound the alarm!
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Sound the alarm, sound the alarm! A potential storm is coming, and everybody must panic! More like sound the false alarm. That is the state of society these days. With the winter storm coming this week everybody is running around buying up all the toilet paper, bottled water, milk, bread, and other staples. I guess everybody is making sandwiches for an army with the amount of bread they are buying. I am not so sure why the surplus of toilet paper is needed unless it is all the dry beans they are going to be eating. I must sit back and laugh at the show. It is like people have lost all common sense and what to do in a power outage.
In March of 1993 an ice storm hit. We were out of power for a week. I do not remember anybody panicking or buying anything in excess. We did not even buy water back then. Our preparations consisted of filling jugs with water out of the sink and cutting firewood. We had washtubs of water we got from the pond to flush the toilets with and the normal amount of toilet paper on hand. People are so afraid of a little inconvenience or that somebody else is going to buy more or have more than they do that they go crazy buying supplies. Social media has made this worse. It spreads panic on everything. I saw somebody ask what will to do if the power goes out and it is cold? What happened to lots of blankets and extra clothes? I have tent camped when it was twenty degrees and been just fine.
Even though this past weekend the weather forecast was just rain, no ice or snow, not unusual weather, yet people wanted to know if school would be closed. In my day we bundled up, got on the bus, and went to school anyway. They buses would get stuck sometimes and another bus would show up for us to get on and continue to school. Nobody panicked. With the amount of access we have to information people still imagine the worse-case scenario. The truth is if people lived a common-sense life their pantries would already be stocked, they would have batteries, and have basic essentials for living. They would not be running around like Chicken Little saying the sky is falling every time a storm approaches.
I am not talking about a catastrophe like Helene, but just normal winter storms that we have endured many times. These storms cause minor inconveniences and potential short-lived power outages. To this younger generation whose evening meals are decided on the menu of the drive through, go ahead and stock your cupboards and prepare yourself for the unexpected, and remember to put all that excess bread and milk in the freezer because it will not keep.
