Don’t mind me, I’ll just die here in the dark

My father-in-law recently faced up to the adult equivalent of “there is no Santa Claus.” Specifically, he discovered that, if the shit ever hits the fan, nobody is going to wipe his ass for him. Well … Maybe that’s unfair. He actually realized that, in case of disaster, he can’t count on “the authorities” to charge to the rescue.

Hmmm … I phrased it better the first time.

The wide-eyed revelation he shared with my wife and me over cheap red wine and better cigars was actually a continuation of a conversation dating back about five years. You see, my wife and I live in Arizona, which has a nasty habit of bursting into flames ^[1] from time to time. Seeing as how the state is so unpredictably flammable, it’s generally a good idea to be ready to bug out if the neighborhood starts to get well-done, and we keep a “go bag” of important documents and the like at hand in case we need to head for less-smoky environs. Dear old dad-in-law’s California digs are similarly combustible ^[2], and also prone to slide into the ocean ^[3] if visited by rain instead of fire. So we thought it wise to inquire as to his preparations for unfortunate events.

“Oh, I’ll just do what they tell me to do.”

When pressed, he grew upset at the idea that he should presume to make plans when there are experts whose job it is to handle such eventualities.

Since then, though, we’ve had Hurricane Katrina, flooding in Tennessee, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and any number of smaller incidents when even the best-intentioned authority figures have been completely overwhelmed by events and unable to play savior to everybody in distress. When authorities aren’t so generously inclined, they sometimes … err … How to put this delicately? Let’s just say that they sometimes act like hungry wolves in a field of sheep — like the New Orleans cops who, apparently for fun, gunned down civilians at a bridge ^[4] in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Don’t you just love a man in a uniform?

So now pops is ready to throw a water filter and a box of Dinty Moore in the pantry, just in case, right? Not so much. It’s all too overwhelming. How can you prepare when the lights could go out for weeks? Or months? (He’s obsessed with the idea that hackers are going to crash the power grid.) What’s the point of doing anything when even the authorities are overwhelmed?

You see, from a state of abject dependence, we’ve journeyed not to self-reliance, but to despair and resignation. God failed — or at least FEMA screwed the pooch — and the old guy has decided to die in the dark rather than lift a finger on his own behalf.

Actually, the lights did go out two years ago, where I live, for the better part of a week. It was a wild storm that nobody anticipated. We drank water from storage containers and read by the light of a Coleman lantern. Hey, when I die, I plan to have a full belly and some mood lighting. Frankly, it’s just not that hard to get ready for some of life’s little speed bumps.

I’m not saying that it’s necessary — or possible — to prepare for the apocalypse. But I don’t pretend to understand people who are determined, one way or another, to be victims in even the most easily handled circumstances.

My father-in-law is a decent, well-intentioned guy. But if, like too many other people, he’s not prepared to carry his own weight if something goes wrong, he better be really careful where he puts that cigar down.

Because, as the world keeps on discovering, despite promises to the contrary, nobody can be counted on to wipe your ass for you.