Ultimate Trinket Adventure Book

The Burning Lava Land

Prompt: Word Prompt (Something about War, Famine, Crisis and Catastrophe)

Crisis

Why is it that just about everyone can turn just about anything into a critically and fatally important crisis? We’re talking about the vapid Valley girls crying at the simple broken nail as if the nail had even been real, most likely it was an acrylic construct tacked on to the feeble real nail beneath. We’re also talking about the sudden scarcity of toilet paper on one store’s shelves that led to a nationwide run on toilet paper, leading to a shortage.

Both of these crises suffer from one thing, a lack of planning. If you are going to do something that might cause you to break a nail, which to be honest is practically anything, then you don’t go and blow sixty bucks on a set of fake nails. Omg, I faked a nail, and it broke big surprise. When it came to the problem of the toilet paper shortage, I keep at least a two-month supply on hand. You know you might need it in an emergency, especially if you have thought ahead enough to have water and nonperishable foods stored for said emergency. Really if you don’t do that either you aren’t going to need the toilet paper either, a coffin maybe, or treatment for dysentery.

A crisis really is just a lack of planning. They actually can happen to people but common things like broken nails and toilet paper shortages aren’t really crises. Crises are things that are so rare and absurd that no one would think to prepare for them, like having a herd of elephants escaping the zoo and trampling your car and your garden. How in the hell do you plan for that sh- stuff.

Absurdities are what I would call actual crises. Every “crisis” I have ever heard of is really just bad planning. Like the environmental crisis, people really should have been able to see that what they were doing was trampling on the environment like a bunch of, elephants. They should have seen that it was going to turn out badly. They should have said whoa let's knock this sh- stuff off before we regret it. But no, we waited until it became serious and then started screaming CRISIS! Blam we need to fix it now! Let’s all go get our nails done!

Seriously? And there are still those Valley Girls out there who don’t see any crisis. Global warming? Uh no, that can’t possibly be real. What do you mean it is hotter than it was a decade ago? Turn on the air conditioning, DUH. Of course, consuming more resources and wasting more energy is going to make this whole thing better. Anybody for a manicure?

Sorry, I don’t mean to offend anyone who actually gets manicures. They have their place, special occasions, weddings, and trophy wives. Still, worrying more about how you look rather than the footprints you are leaving on the planet is rather lacking in foresight. Never mind that the things used in your typical manicure are toxic. Read the labels, use them in a well-ventilated area, and do not breathe in fumes or dust. But hey how is that a problem. There is plenty of clean air to blow in from outside.

Okay, I am taking this a bit far on the sarcasm. But I really don’t have any sympathy for people in “Crisis” partly because when my family had a crisis and ended up homeless for seven months there were precious few people who offered us any sympathy. We found our way into a homeless shelter. The magnanimous people running the shelter wouldn’t let you through the doors without a breathalyzer test and you had to submit to any drug testing at any time. So some homeless people have substance abuse issues so all homeless people have substance abuse issues. If you don’t like the rule, too bad you should have planned better before you became homeless.

The shelter wouldn’t let us bring our emotional support animals inside with us so they were staying in the car. Animal control ended up taking them. They showed us enough sympathy to help us get them temporary lodging in a no-kill shelter. When it came time that we had a home to bring them back to with us the No-kill shelter told us. We should have planned better before we became homeless, they are going to better homes.

Our crisis didn’t matter to them. It didn’t matter that there was no planning on what to do when we were seriously injured in a car accident and none of us could work for almost a year. The landlord told us we should have planned better when the insurance company felt they could wait six months to pay us the loss of wages benefits. We should have planned our lives better in an economy where a single mother is forced to live paycheck to paycheck. To have enough money to pay rent, she made too much to receive assistance.

Yeah, we should have planned better.

834 words