No. And you can’t make me!
But seriously, I have lived my entire life with an internalized emergency preparedness plan. I doubt very much that most people are always looking for a way out of situations like I was.
When I was in first grade, someone shot at our bus with a BB gun. They actually hit the window of the seat I was sitting in. All of a sudden I heard this loud, weird noise and I had glass all in my lap and everyone kept asking me if I was ok. I remember the bus aid looking me up and down and made me sit with her. I think she thought I was about to start bleeding at any point. I really did not get any glass on me and I didn’t get hurt at all. But later on, all that fuss worked itself into my brain and I was scared of everything.
But before that experience, when I was even younger, I heard my older relatives all talking about how my aunt got robbed in her new home that she had just moved to with her new husband. She was in her 60s I think and some guy crawled in through this tiny bathroom window she had. I’m not sure I understood that correctly when I think about that now, though. I am not sure that anyone actually fits through that window. But what I did understand was that the cops eventually caught the guy with all of her costume jewelry. She had TONS of jewelry, none of it really worth anything. I spent so much time looking at people’s hands after I heard this story because I wanted to see how many people were stealing things and getting red hands.
Yes, I heard them say that the thief was caught “red-handed” and in my 4 year old brain I was sure that meant his hands turned red because he stole from my aunt.
But this one event scared the sleep right out of me. I would go to bed and stay awake as long as I could, watching my bedroom window for a red-handed guy busting in to steal my toys. I was sure it was going to happen because my aunt was nice and a bad thing happened to her. I was bad, so bad things were definitely going to happen to me.
As time went on, my brain matured a little more and I realized that anyone trying to break into my bedroom window was going to need a ladder to get to the window and there’s no way someone was carrying ladders around to rob people. So I started falling asleep quickly without any anxiety. But after this one event, I really started paying attention to ways to break into people’s homes. I decided that if I thought like a thief, I could thwart a thief.
Then came military service, which heightened the anxiety that made me over-prepare for years before. Now I can’t go anywhere without an escape plan. I always know which way I would take if someone started shooting in a crowd, how I would get my family out and keep all of us alive, I always make sure I know an escape plan while driving, and I regularly practice these things in my mind, especially when I get somewhere new.
So no, I don’t need to develop an emergency preparedness plan because I already have a working one in my brain.
And yes, within a year I figured out that “red-handed” doesn’t have anything to do with the actual color of your hands!!
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