A Little Ray of Sunshine

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

A thought on attitude

Attitude isn't really quite the right word for this, training might be closer . . . well, you tell me.
My husband and I were sitting at dinner the other day discussing various things. (I recall talking about mortars, I having seen them from the fireing end, and he from the downrange end. And somehow we segued to this.)
He related this little anticdote, about his mother, Meme, and an old family friend, Mrs. F.
There was some rioting going on, but nothing much, and the two ladies were walking down the street to market. Suddenly some gunshots were heard. Mrs. F looked around. "What do you think is going on, Anna?"* "Anna?"
"Shh." Meme was under some bushes at the side of the road, waving franticly at her friend to get down.

Meme, having lived through a revolutionary war, reacted first and worried about what had happened later. Mrs. F reacted the other way around.

Many people think they are prepared for some sort of disaster or sytemic collapse. But how do you train for that, except by living through it? That's not to say that everyone who thinks they're prepared is entirely wrong, just that some people may be surprised to find that they are physicly prepared but not mentally prepared.

*Anna is not my mil's name. It's as if a modern American girl was given the name Muriel and decided to call herself Mary instead. Ironicly, my mil's given name translates to one of the more popular names for baby girls in this country now.