Friday, September 12, 2008

Hurricane Literacy

No matter how ready I am for a storm, I always seem to think of additional things that we need at the last minute.

Yesterday morning after the entling got off to school I moseyed over to the local grocery store to acquire additional water, carbohydrates, fat and salt to augment the peanut butter and tuna in the pantry.

As I watched people quickly filling baskets with bleach, water and canned food, I congratulated myself on my earlier preparations. Still, I still managed to fill a basket with sundry items. While I waited in line to check out, I had the opportunity to eyeball other people's baskets. Did they have something I had not thought of?

Two things in their shopping carts stood out.

Apparently large cartons of Miller Light Beer are part of many, many Texans' Hurricane Preparedness kits.

The other thing that struck me was how many women were picking up copies of People Magazine, Us, Entertainment Weekly, and the other magazines that surround check-out lines at the grocery store. The average was 4 magazines per person.

So, in the face of looming electronic media outages, people will revert to reading.

Happily, here in the entwood, we have enough to read for an age!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

My friend who lives on the eastern Florida coast told me the only preparations you need are bleach and booze. My husband went to Spec's here last night and they told him they had sold a month's worth of beer yesterday alone!

teacherninja said...

That's hilarious, thank you. Hope everyone's safe.

Jen Robinson said...

Good luck, Camille! I'll be thinking of you. And, thanks to you, I'll also be thinking of all those people sitting around drinking Miller Lite and reading People Magazine.

Kelly said...

Hang in there, Camille!

(And I'll bet re: Miller Light.)

Anonymous said...

The storm coverage on TV looks amazing (although not necessarily in a good way). Best wishes for you and yours.