Remember that Y2K scare back in 2000? I found a package of those Oriental noodles hiding in the back corner of my pantry the other day, with an expiration date of 2003, and it brought back all those memories in a rush.
On the day after the millennium began we still had computers that worked, running water and the toilet paper had not reverted back to a Sears and Roebuck catalog. The car sitting in the driveway was still a vehicle and had not turned into a horse and buggy. Yes, sir, we could definitely go down in the history books as survivors.
Of course there were a few things we had to take care of before the History Channel called on us for an interview. I had to find the receipt for 10,000 packages of those Oriental noodles. The way I figured it was that we would never starve with that much dried up square noodles in the house. I could boil water over an open fire in the back yard, squirt a little catsup in one bowl of noodles and it would be spaghetti; drizzle some blackberry jelly over another bowl full and it would be cobbler for dessert, and we could always cube up some Spam and call it a casserole.
Ohhh, Spam! Five years after we got our official survivor T-shirt, I looked through recipes and recipes (thank goodness the computer had not crashed) to figure out what to do with four cases of the stuff that was still shoved back in my pantry. Fried with some onions and green peppers, it wasn’t too bad with a side dish of those instant mashed potatoes. I only had about twenty bags of the potatoes and their expiration ran out before the Spam did. Then there was the matter of 50 cans of pork and beans that had a no return policy on them, either. I offered to give back the T-shirt if they’d take the food off my hands with it.
However, I had passed up the opportunity to order a Claymore mine for the backyard. The tabloid said the aliens were waiting to attack until right after midnight. Seemed to be a bit much in those pre-zombie and pre-walking dead days, so I just dug a bunch of holes in the back yard and tossed in empty soup cans. I coated the back steps with bacon drippings in case they made it through the yard without breaking a leg. When we found out that we’d survived the big Y2K scare, I didn’t have to disarm the mines and the local tom cats had a party to lick all the bacon grease off the steps.
I had to cancel my subscription to Stockpilers Quarterly, but I got to keep the manual can opener, so it wasn’t a big loss. I’m still using the can opener almost twenty years later…but the T-shirt has worn completely out.
The Oriental noodles that had an expiration date of April, 2001 reminded me of my radical cousin. Good Lord! I hoped he wasn’t still in that bunker. He took a whole bunch of rebels into an underground bunker somewhere out in the Arizona desert. I was supposed to get in touch with him by some kind of crazy phone he’d rigged up if it was all just a big scare…so he’d know that we weren’t out here fighting each other with machetes over Spam and noodles.
I found the phone under a pile of shoes in the floor of my closet and called the coded number. He answered right away and made me go through a whole line of coded questions—thank God, I’d taped the answers to the bottom of the phone—before he’d believe it was me. I told him I was sorry that I’d forgotten about him but he laughed and said that he’d been out of the bunker for eighteen years. He’d only stayed down there until he ran out of Spam and noodles.
So we are survivors! Never forget.
