Joe Bob's Survival 101
Joe Bob's Survival 101
By Joe Bob Briggs
August 4, 2003
1. Don't run to the drugstore to buy any candles, flashlights or other supplies, because the long chaotic lines look too depressing, especially at the stores where they have the door cracked open about six inches and they're negotiating with everyone because they're afraid there will be a stampede.
2. You have a Bic lighter. Go with that.
3. When your apartment becomes darker than the remotest parts of Carlsbad Caverns, so dark that there are not even any shadows or gradations of dark, think to yourself, "I've never known the meaning of 'pitch' before. I won't be so quick to use the term 'pitch darkness,' because this is sort of the new standard."
4. When you can't sleep, because it's too damn hot and muggy and you've already removed every piece of clothing except your boxer briefs, remember what the Meramec Caverns tour guide once told you about the people who tried to live inside a cave and went blind because if your eyeballs are deprived of light for too long, they stop working.
5. When you think it's 4 a.m., use your Bic lighter to check your watch. It's 11:30.
6. Take a stroll. It will only take you five minutes to find your way to the door, and you'll only trip twice, because wherever you think the furniture is, it's not exactly in that place.
7. Retrace your steps because you forgot your shirt. Not only did you forget your shirt, you forgot where you put your shirt. Flail and grope in the general existential vicinity of where a shirt might be. Assume each object could conceal a shirt. Use the Bic lighter to illuminate shirt-like shapes. Locate shirt on floor. Return to door, stumbling only once this time.
8. Even though you've gone up and down the stairs of the building 10,000 times, and even though you've actually counted the number of stair steps, remark on the fact that there's always either one more or one less step to the landing than there should be. Your shoes were already scuffed anyway.
9. There's light on the street! Well, a little. Since it's Thursday night, which is the biggest party night of the week at Brother Jimmy's Bait Shack on the corner, someone has pulled his car up to the curb and cranked up the stereo, and there are people dancing on the sidewalk. This is amusing for about, oh, two minutes.
10. Strike up a conversation with the neighborhood beggar, whose normal opening line is "How are you doing this evening?" but has changed his spiel to "The store is open. We have batteries, cigarettes, juice and water. The store is open." He's stationed himself in front of the Yemeni deli, where he holds the ever present white coffee cup in hand, supposedly because the information that the store is open will result in 50 cents here and there.
11. Go to the darkened little window and ask the Yemenis if the store is really open. "Yes, and the beer is not too warm yet." How comforting.
12. Watch the police cars and emergency vehicles roll by with their emergency lights on. Check your watch by the light of the beggar's penlight. It's 12:15. Comfort yourself with the fact that it will take at least 30 minutes to grope your way back to the apartment.
13. Once back in your underground monk's cell, find your cell phone. Dial it. Dial it again. Amuse yourself by dialing various numbers that don't work.
14. Dalhart, Texas. The cell phone works for calls to Dalhart, Texas. Important principle here: the smaller the town, the more likely you can snag an uplink. Tell your friend in Dalhart, Texas, "Whatever you do, do not hang up this phone." Coerce the friend into holding the phone up to the TV so you can hear Mayor Bloomberg's press conference. Resulting information: none.
15. Pretend you're in a sweat lodge and sleep two hours.
16. Call Dalhart, Texas. Find out that Toledo has power. Curse Toledo.
17. Grope your way to your laptop computer and turn it on. Answering old downloaded email at this point is more fascinating than the Pamplona bullfights.
18. Make the pleasant discovery that a laptop computer emits more light from the screen than a Bic lighter. Nostalgically reacquaint yourself with objects like your stapler.
19. Make the unpleasant discovery that laptop computers don't run that long on batteries.
20. Call Dalhart, Texas. Find out that the President said "This is a wakeup call." Reflect that wakeup calls are currently impossible to send or receive.
21. Recline in a sleeping position. Let your mind wander to the time you toured the Caves Monastery in Kiev, where monks lived underground their entire lives and were entombed in their rooms. Must be some kind of sensory-deprivation nirvana you can tap into here.
22. Call Dalhart, Texas. America is blaming Ottawa. Ottawa is blaming Ohio. Ohio is blaming lightning. Pataki is blaming the power company. "Cleveland has the worst of it." Curse Bloomberg for not convincing everyone that I personally have the worst of it.
23. Eat the remainder of a day-old pizza.
24. Awaken at the crack of dawn for the first time in years.
25. Go get a newspaper. There are no newspapers. There are no places open to sell newspapers.
26. Call Dalhart, Texas. "Sometime today." Woohoo.
27. Say a prayer to Apollo, god of the sun.
28. Roam the streets like an Iraqi looter in search of a newspaper.
29. Return to apartment. Enter a Zen-like state of immobility.
30. Abandon Buddhism and start reading old copies of the New York Post. J-Lo and Ben. Ah, times were much simpler then.
31. Say a prayer to Baron Marcel Bich, Frenchman, born 1914, died 1994, inventor of the Bic lighter.
© 2003 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved