I am so freaked out right now.
I have been following the Ebola outbreak since it was only a few hundred cases. With deaths now in the thousands and yesterday’s revelation that a patient strolled into a Dallas emergency room twice before diagnosis, my anxiety is in overdrive.
I am a confirmed fatalist.
Whenever “they” (experts, government, scholars) say something isn’t possible, I pop on my tin foil hat and prepare for the inevitable disaster and/or zombie apocalypse.
I believe in conspiracies, cover-ups, and E.T.
I believe there may be secret CIA messages in my Alphabet Soup.
I believe we all have an FBI file and mine is labeled, “Too easily distracted to be of concern.”
I believe Windex may cure dandruff.
Despite this Chicken Little personality, I refuse to sound the panic button within the walls of my home. Having children somehow awoke a portion of my brain never before used:
REASON.
When the boys resisted swimming in the ocean last spring (thanks in large part to my husband’s non-stop viewing of “Shark Week”), I found myself citing statistics and actuarial improbability.
When my middle son, Jack, hyperventilated as tornado sirens blared this summer, I assured him tornados only touched down in Chicago every 80 years and the last one was 1961, so we were all good.
When my youngest son, Joey, spotted a centipede the size of his head sprinting across his bedroom, I presented him with the data on how centipedes eat all bad bugs and keep our entire family safe from harm.
Joey named his new pet, “Harry.”
I am not sure who this new-fangled, calmer-of-all-fears is. She looks like me. She sounds like me. But how could she possibly BE me?
It is almost as though I was abducted by aliens and replaced with the dad from “The Brady Bunch.”
It’s all starting to make sense now….
