I was thinking this evening about mental movies. I’ve seen enough mention of them in popular culture that I’m sure that even if you don’t have your own set, you at least know what I’m talking about.
Anyway, I was thinking about the movies in my mind, and what I don’t understand is why mine are always disaster flicks.
Seriously.
Several months ago I ran across something (I don’t have a clue what, anymore) talking about getting out in emergencies. Things you need in an emergency, things you should always carry with you, etc. And I read something about a disaster where the residents of a town had to evacuate. Perhaps it was a chemical plant disaster. Immaterial. The point is that they had to get out, and couldn’t go back for anything. Including their pets. Almost as an aside there was mention of the fact that during the days/weeks the town was evacuated, the pets that survived were the ones who had access to water, which was in most cases a toilet with the seat left up.
Do I remember anything else about the discussion? Of course not. But the bit about the dead pets stuck with me.
So. We close the lid on the toilet. Why? because there is little more disturbing than unexpectedly sitting down on a toilet seat covered in wet paw prints. Except that now I wonder whether I’m sending Kat and Kit to a certain death, because if there is an emergency, they won’t have access to water so they can survive (assuming of course that the disaster didn’t kill ’em right off).
Does everyone do this, or is this just my own kind of personal hell, constantly imagining the worst that could possibly go wrong, and attempting to find ways to circumvent that fate?
I try to rationalize it: Of course I grab everything during a fire drill! The boiler caught on fire when I was in elementary school, and we had to evacuate even without our coats. Never want to do that again! Reasonable enough. Except that that doesn’t explain why I carry a handcuff key on my key-chain, why I carry a pocketknife in my coat, and why I feel like I should always carry around matches or a lighter, or any of the other little quirks I attempt to prepare for.
Hmmm….
On second thought, maybe I should just stop listening to the news.