Diffusing an issue with fuses
I have been looking for a context in which to place the conversation I was having, last Monday (in my head, of course. Where else.) I found one when I woke up to the sorry news of how they are going to up the number of executions actually executed in the United States despite there being practically no companies who will deliver two of the three ingredients necessary to cause a humane (?!) death by lethal injection. Never mind, we’ll just put them down on sodiumpenthiumbarbitol: a heavy sedative. How much and how effective it will be might take a bit of experimenting in each individual instance. Eventually they’ll not wake up again. It works for horses doesn’t it? Job done.
I consider reintroducing the guillotine: off with their heads! A fair method of execution by my account. A brutal and gory execution to match the barbaric sentence. (Which is still more humane than a life sentence of solitary confinement which comes with the assurance the convict will go insane in the membrane.)
I have always regarded sleeping pills as murder on the consciousness but now I really felt justified in mumbling to myself, Sedatives: the latest weapons of mass destruction.
It's a question of trust
... that these things never happen to you.
For who can you trust will know what to do?
Linking into the previous musing, I couldn’t say that I would trust an engineer could have helped me out last Monday, when I meant to ask someone - in my head at least- : what to do when you find an armed grenade (with the pin pulled out) under your bed. I marked how, totally inanely, I instantly went through the (tiny) list of useful "chappies" I might be able to call in my panic. Of course a plumber or an electrician will not know what to do just because they are males and some man at some stage invented the darn thing. It's putting too much pressure on men again!
I had gone out to do chores without having googled it before I left‡ and I found myself dippily rather worried about it by the end of the day. You know how things can start to mill themselves into a tangle like that.
Let me assure you I can also laugh at the proposterous noise in my head. What on earth will I bug myself with next?
I well realise, there is no point my asking anyone or worrying about not knowing anyone I could call in the case of such an eventuality, like a damosel in distress. I remind myself it takes a bomb squad in hazmat-astronaut suits with a remote controlled robot on wheels to look into it before they can even decide what to do next.
I think to take note that I might be better off asking a woman, anyway: it might occur more naturally to her to allow for a squirrel-brain for all sorts of particularly female reasons; time of the month, menopause, or empty-nest syndrome, instead of swiftly deciding I need to be carted off. (Marginal note: I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been a woman who had slung this hypothetical grenade through my window. No 24, in particular, would like me to either move or die violently in my sleep.)
Sensible analysis tells me panic is futile.
In the unlikely event of a grenade tossed my way, I would either have been killed by it on impact or have all the time in the world to drive down to the police station to make inquiries myself. No advice on the spot or in advance required. But wait, THAT’S just it: the police? Would they know what to do?
Who do you call?
Nobody in my neck of the woods considers this grenade scenario, as a due matter of course, a remotely realistic scenario.† I am not even involved with the Maffia at this point in time. People just won't know how to react, no man, woman, helpdesk administrator, not even the police.
They would worry more why I worry about these things at all.
I can explain though.
Oh, please do let me explain.
Part of my taking into serious consideration, how the situation would be for me, is caused by an empathy made to chomp at the bit each morning, waking up to BBC World on my radio. This station never fails to inform me that I am going to have a breeze of a day by comparison to hundreds of millions of people, who would furthermore find my question over breakfast rather boring because they have discussed it a hundred times before. "It happens. You have to take each case individually. Now do you want some coffee or not?"
My concern, however, is not really even that closely linked to this particular empathy. My wondering whether anyone has got Grenade Busters in their phone; or the number of the Military at hand - as if there is such a "number to call"; or whether there is any point in keeping an extra pillow on the bed to chuck at it? Or a full glass of water by my bedside to fling over it? - is more to do with that question that has been occupying me all week: how urgent is it to be prepared to cope with all eventualities as an individual who is uttlerly solely responsible for their survival? It can be a daunting task at two in the morning when things go bump in the night; or when your back is put out three days straight (and I realised I didn't have a single number to call to help me make a cup of tea); but it seems an impossible task if it has to take malfunctioning grenades into account, as well.
Who this event did happen to
I promise you, too, I have not been watching too much news and identifying with those in some warzone (take your pick) as if I cannot find purpose to my life without bearing the whole weight of the world on my shoulders; I was reading “The Issa Valley” by my beloved genius wordsmith Czeslaw Milosz.
We are situated in a fairly lyrical, slow-paced, post First World War Polish-Lithuanian rural setting when a boy wakes up to find an armed grenade, with the safety pin pulled, under his bed. It wasn’t meant for him, but all that is beside the point. Within no time, a crowd gathers around his bed to help sort out the situation. It is THIS that must have struck a very sensitive chord with me. Somehow they fished the thing out from under the bed knowing what to do (or knowing nothing but trusting their luck instead).
For someone who has had to do absolutely everything by herself for the past 18 years and that for two (and the other acts like a non-cooperative permanent fifteen year old, at five years of age, at 21 years of age) such a support network (called family and neighbours) is magical. It's poetical. It's unreal. It's the stuff in books.
The reasons for the assault were less easily sorted; we are talking centuries of complex and strained Polish-Lithuanian relations and an overall identity crisis thanks to men with their pencils and their maps drawing arbitrary lines that change with every new major shift in government. That's Europe for you. Wouldn't you love to get out? Hitch up your skirts and wade over to the Americas? Sounds like bags of fun over there at the minute. Or to the Antipodes, where you had better not arrive as a little island and risk the odds of sinking.
All clear
In any case, there is no such grenade under my bed, just as there is no hope of any direct help at hand; or hand to hold should the bed explode to kingdom come.
The pseudo panic of such a day's musing, of course, serves to highlight how the new individual (of the western cyber-run world) needs a new kind of tailored company. The System exists for the less emancipated ones or the ones who regress (the elderly). But where can the graduates go to work on their advanced individuality-status without losing their faith in community?
‡ (My) Google does not deliver any tips or tricks on what to do in such an emergency.
† Having said that....undetonated WW2 bombs are still being found on building sites or in lakes which in fact attract thrill seekers to go (magnet) fishing for them. Apparently, the police are, indeed, the first port of call in the case of any dangerous finds. It is more an issue to my mind, that in my under-the-bed scenario the whole story doesn't add up very well for the police to be likely to rush into action.
The damosel in distress at the top is Andromeda being saved by hero Perseus, painted by Ingres.