Monday, June 16, 2008

Panicking the Populace!


Well, that was fun! I ran up to the Shoppers Food Warehouse in Olney at 6:40 this morning to buy some bottled water, given our latest water main break... and it turns out everyone in zip code 20832 had the same idea... By the time I got there, the water was almost gone... and five minutes later, it WAS gone. The line to check out ran the entire length of the store, and people were already plotting their next move... I heard one unlucky woman who missed out talking on her cel phone, saying "I'm gonna hit Safeway and 7-Eleven... You go to CVS and Giant". The guy in front of me in line said he was going to use his hot tub water to flush his toilets.

I bought three cases of water and a 16 pound bag of ice, despite the fact that WSSC tells us we should have our water back later today. From my experience, it's the good old "Bread, milk and toilet paper" phenomenon that we always see when snow is forecast. You just know we're only going to see flurries, but BY GOD, we're not going to run out of STUFF! And there's always the smug and slightly guilty feeling of triumph when you're leaving the store with a cart full of supplies and you see people just arriving and knowing that they're going to miss out!


I remember back in 1999 when the world was awaiting the Y2K "disaster"... My wife saw on television that people were buying up gallon bottles of water, so she went out a couple of days before the New Year and came home with four jugs of H2O... When I asked her why, she said "because I saw it on TV"! Well, of course, the New Year came and went, and the great Y2K drought miraculously never came to pass, but we kept that water in the basement for another 4 years, until we moved to our new home. Robin wanted to move the water with us, but I refused. So, of course, as soon as I got back from the grocery store this morning, she gave me a finger flick upside the head and said, "SEE! I TOLD you we should have kept that water!"


A lesson to us all, gentlemen... The wife is ALWAYS right - Even when it takes 8 1/2 years to prove her point!

2 comments:

Julie Matthews said...

Your sister is always right, too!

Love,
Your Sister

Emperor of Ranting, Archduke of Cynicism said...

In this situation, Dad will never surrender to you the luxry of always being right. In your situation, my fahter is your equal. Therefore, he is not psychologically inclined to always think you are right.

In the case of my mother, she dominates. We all know this. Therefore, mom is always right... except amongst the 25% of the population who dissents. They are the 14 year old age group. They know mom is not always right. Mom has no effect on the teenager. HA!