Ok, I’m not proud of it but I did get “schooled” by my kids this weekend. Long story short, we were out and about trying to find what my kids called the “ladder” park which turned out to be a nearby playground at the local lake. After about 45 minutes of driving we finally found it. Never mind that.
The point of this story is this: during our travels we wound on the same street as my child’s school but coming from the opposite direction. As I didn’t realize it at the time my kids swore up and down that this was THE street to the school. I said “no way” believing that we were in an entirely different part of the city–yes I was that turned around–and willingly bet my oldest child $20 expecting to teach him a lesson not to bet unless you’re sure. As you might suspect, I was absolutely WRONG! We were, in fact, on the correct street but I didn’t realize it because we were coming at it from the opposite direction and my brain just wouldn’t accept that’s where we were.
The question, therefore, was how in the world could that have happened to me? It’s not like I just moved to the area (we’ve been here about a year) and have never been to my kid’s school. Granted, I’ve never been down that particular road beyond the school but, c’mon… there’s no way I could have been that lost. And yet I was.
So, what does all this mean to your prepping?
Well, the first thing I thought of was how I saw/read interviews of people who have had their entire neighborhoods (and towns) demolished by natural disasters–be it an earthquake, tornado, or hurricane–and one of the things I noticed being repeated was how un-recognizable the area was after such a disaster. I always thought to myself that there’s no way it was THAT bad. But, after this weekend, I see the light. Heck, everything was perfectly fine and I couldn’t recognize the area!
Second, it means that if you’re anything like me then it’s easy to get into a comfort zone. I’m sure we all have a preferred way to get to places like work, school, and the store, but what happens if you can’t use your normal routes. While I certainly do have alternate ways to get to my anticipated evacuation destinations, for example, what about the basic places like work, school, the store, or wherever?
More importantly, what can you do about it?
The obvious answer is to simply get out and drive around the area. I mean REALLY drive the area. I thought I had done some of this basic “get to know the area” driving a while back but it’s clear that I didn’t do nearly enough as I hadn’t gotten beyond the other side of my child’s school. Had I lived here for twenty plus years then I’d imagine I would know the area much better but I didn’t have that experience to fall back on.
Another answer is to get out the map… and look at it, no, I mean REALLY look at it. I decided to get out a local map yesterday and, amazingly enough, it all makes sense now. I see how the road I ended up on connected to my kid’s school. Would I have figured that out if I hadn’t been looking for it? I don’t know but maybe I would have remembered something and connected the dots.
Probably the best thing to do is to both drive and read the map–not at the same time, of course–to see how it all fits together. Maybe even get a bit lost intentionally so that you can find your way back or even wind up who knows where otherwise. I can see now how important it is to truly get out and about. If I can get confused when things are good and normal how bad could it be if things are un-recognizable, such as in a true disaster? I can only imagine!
Oh, and did I pay him the $20 bet? Yes, I did… but only after I made him pay me back $1.50 he owned me. I guess that’ll teach me not to bet when I’m not 110% sure. 😉
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