How's Your Hurricane Box?
A version of this ran in The Virginian-Pilot on September 15, 2005.
Quick. Call the cops. Seems I've been robbed.
Yup, sometime during the past two years a prowler must have slipped into my house and made off with my valuables.
Once inside, he cleverly went past the stuff we'd miss right away, the TV, the DVD player. This bandit took batteries - dozens of them - and cans of tuna. He pocketed peanut butter and duct tape. He absconded with flashlights, paper plates and wooden matches. Even our Band-Aids.
Gone. All gone.
I made this startling discovery Wednesday after seeing the front page of the paper.
"It's not going to miss," screamed the headline.
Ophelia, it seemed, was destined to brush Hampton Roads, as either a hurricane or a tropical storm. We were on the far edge of the weather map's "cone of doom."
I smiled smugly, thinking of all the procrastinators who'd flood the hardware stores that day, fighting over the last roll of duct tape.
Not me. I had a hurricane survival kit. Or so I thought.
Still, given the news, it seemed prudent to dust off my Rubbermaid life-support tub to check that my storm stash was in order.
I popped the lid and stared in disbelief.
A single can of Sterno sat in the bottom.
Who took my stuff? I wailed.
Then I remembered.
There was that time I wanted to make tuna surprise but was out of StarKist.
I'll borrow a can and replace it later, I thought.
The peanut butter? Ran out. On a school day.
This is a bona fide emergency, I reasoned as I snatched the jar.
And so it went.
Batteries? My latte frother needed the AAs.
Flashlights? Sent to summer camp and never came back.
Paper products? They went on a picnic.
Matches? Oops. I had no way to light the grill and company was coming.
Duct tape? A Halloween costume.
Bottled water? I was thirsty.
Granola bars? I was hungry.
That doesn't make me a bad person. It does, however, make me an unprepared person.
So, I ventured out for replacement storm supplies. Plopping down about $20 worth of batteries on the conveyor belt at Target, I looked around.
"Bet everybody's buying these today," I said, sighing .
"Actually, no," the cashier said. "I thought that's all we'd sell today, but everyone I talked to said they're not worrying. It's just a Category One."
Just a Category One? Isn't that about what Isabel was by the time she got here?
Those of us who live along the coast know - or ought to - that these capricious cyclones can strengthen, weaken, blow out to sea or head right at you without much notice.
One minute you're safe. Then the next thing you know, CNN's Anderson Cooper is clinging to a light pole in front of your house.
"This is amazing. Totally unexpected, Wolf," he's shrieking into the camera. "They said it was a minimal storm, but now this.
"What's even worse," he hollers as a gust of wind lifts him in the air: "I've been told that people on this street used all their batteries and ate all their emergency food months ago. Hard to believe, isn't it?"
