What Prepared Me For This
By: Helen Cassidy Page
Tags: Life Lessons, Mental Health, Psychology, Advice, Self

From the way some people are panic buying toilet paper, hand sanitizer and canned goods, you can believe the president when he says nobody could have seen this coming.

But some people did. I can’t decide who’s the best prepared. The people on Hoarders or the coupon cutting crowd. You know, those folks at the opposite end of the spectrum who have just as much stuff they will never use, except it’s all neatly stacked and labeled and makes them look forward-thinking instead of the person with some version of OCD we hope we haven’t become.

From what I can tell, neither of those groups have anything to worry about as far as shortages go, except barring the door from neighboring hordes who discover their stash of paper goods, mustard, and packaged spaghetti sauce they’ve been collecting for years.

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What else would they need two dozen cases of large, economy-size mouth wash if not for such a pandemic, when just one of the large, economy-size bottles would probably get them through the shelter-in-place period?

Hoarders, too, I think are stocked up for the duration. If they can find their cans of beans and creamed corn in the sticks of old newspapers and out of date mail.

But who am I to talk? I’ve been alone too long and don’t mean to take potshots at anyone, whether you have lost control of your possessions or can’t control them enough. Please, feel free to make old lady jokes in return.

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Who am I to cast stones, I who hardly live a perfect life? Take, for example, the pandemic.

While I can accumulate piles of possessions I don’t really need, I ask myself daily why I did not prepare better for this calamity.

Oh, my supporters will say, how could you have known it was coming?

Really, my better self will mock? Where do you think the writer of Outbreak and Contagion got their ideas? Because better minds than ours were already considering this particular end of days scenario and had been broadcasting the possibility, if we’d cared to listen. People like those in authority in the government, for example, not just two-bit writers trying to make a buck off a sensational story.

So yeah, I should have known this was coming. I’d read so many articles about all the microbes waiting in the wings with bated breath, ready to infect human hosts. We’d never heard of ebola, that terrifying killer?

Oh, yeah, but it lives in Africa. As if only people in far off countries have to worry about dying awful deaths by the thousands. We in our pristine first world countries only see pandemics in the movies, right?

We’d see them in our nightmares if we read official documents, available to any Googler with a hint of curiosity. Then we’d know how close humans were encroaching on habitats meant for the animal and microscopic kingdoms, and we stay awake worrying not if but when.

And then we’d start hoarding ahead of the crowd.

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You know, to beat the rush. Because we would know that humans have been pretty careless about monitoring the line in the sand, or the bush, or the cave, or wherever creatures harmful to our life and well-being have lived for eons without bothering us.

So what’s a little bush meat between friends? Or why worry about building houses close to the natural habitat of a rat that cozies up to a hantavirus? Nothing, unless you get infected with a hemorrhagic or pulmonary disease kills you. LIke we haven’t known that would happen. Like our blood didn’t pump a little faster every time a story of a breakout virus infection hit the news.

Okay, so you didn’t do what experts say every family should do and store three months’ worth of supplies in case of an emergency. I get it. Some families have a tough time meeting the rent each month and paying for just one week’s groceries. Where are they going to get the cash to stock up in case some disease they can’t pronounce hits in a 500-year calamity?

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Have you ever heard of the 1% solution? I had and ignored it. That’s why I’m so dependent on my neighbors to keep me supplied in food and necessities. To prepare for contingencies, we don’t have to strip the shelves in one shopping marathon. Buy a can of beans one week. An extra roll of toilet paper the next. Increase our stores by 1% each week or each month, and in time, ywe will have our stash.

I did that after the Loma Prieta Earthquake that hit the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989. Fortunately, I lived on solid ground and only lost a teacup that fell of a shelf in the rocking and rolling. My issue was lack of communication back then.

But after the shock waves subsided, physical and psychological, I stocked up on gallons of water. Nailed heavy objects to the wall like bookcases and armoires and have never slept under anything heavy.

But in time, I began stealing into my hoard of cash. The downed power lines knocked out the ATMs and conventional wisdom said salt away some Franklins. I started using the canned goods to make room in my small closet. Before I knew it, I’d forgotten about preparing for the next big one.

So when calamities befall me, I could say they dropped out of nowhere. But actually, I know better.

No, I couldn’t have foreseen this novel coronavirus because I didn’t know people ate bats in China, if indeed that is where this pandemic started. But I knew a deadly outbreak of a pathogen could start somewhere. Viruses live all over the world. Humans have immunity to few of them.

We’re like the native populations that Captain Cook and the other explorers wiped out by the hundreds of thousands bringing diseases like measles to people who had no immunity. Fortunately, we have better communication and research labs to nail a vaccine these days. But not before the death toll rises.

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about not judging ourselves for the way we handle this enforced isolation. I stand by that philosophy, even though I’m a bit crotchety today. I’m aware once again that I’m totally dependent on friends to do my shopping, clear away the bags of recycling cluttering up the corner of my kitchen, and check in on me to make sure I haven’t fallen over in a dead faint from sheer boredom with my own company.

Photo by Andras Kovacs on Unsplash

So I’m not annoyed that I had a spell of tears when I was prancing around the living room to Glenn Miller’s music for my 10,000 steps, the first tune that came up on YouTube today. For some reason, those old numbers make me happy as I dance with my camera tripod or hold onto a chair so I won’t fall as I recreate my high school jitterbug.

But today, I was overcome with sadness for all the suffering. For the days my daughter and her husband struggle, or the numbers of deaths that mount, or the latest celebrity name that pierces the veil of invincibility I cling to that real people don’t really get this.

My emotion was real, but it opened me up to some reflection. What will I learn from this ordeal, assuming I continue to remain healthy?

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It seems I didn’t learn enough from the big earthquake in San Francisco. I don’t have a store of cash in case someone should need it for an emergency — a power outage that shuts down credit card thingys. I don’t have many cans of food. If something happened to my neighbors, what would I do?

As I write this, I think a bit of a scold is creeping into my tone. It’s for me to remember how dependent I am. How unprepared for the pandemic I was. I couldn’t have known exactly how the world would come to a halt, but if someone could imagine it in the apocalyptic novels I’ve scorned, then it can happen in real life. That much I’ve learned. I could and should have been prepared for some kind of calamity.

After all. I don’t live in the Garden of Eden. The rent was too high in that neighborhood.

So I’m making a list for the day when I start shopping for myself again. An extra roll of toilet paper. A can of white beans. A sealed package of licorice or chocolate that will last until the next millennia because man does not live on canned goods alone.

I’ll clear out a shelf in the back of my closet, tossing out old purses to make room if necessary. I hope I die a natural death in a decade or two before we go through this again. And I hope those who come after me find a stash of essentials that prove I learned my lesson. Even if they do say, “Would you look at this? That crazy old lady hoarded toilet paper. Who would do a thing like that?”