Confession Time: This morning, on my way to the radio station, I swung through an ATM and took out $100 in cash- not because I needed the money for anything in particular, but simply because it gave me a tiny sense of comfort in the wake of yesterday’s meltdown on Wall Street. With the Dow having plunged 504 points and with the very real possibility of another meltdown today that might be even worse, I just had to have a little extra cash in my wallet. It brought to mind images of Henny Penny and Turkey Lurkey and someone yelling “the sky is falling!” – and I guess that person would be me. What can I say? I was spooked – and to some extent still am spooked by the frightening headlines trumpeting the bankruptcy of one major investment firm after another. I say this as someone who has remained blissfully ignorant of almost all financial matters. I know that Ulysses S. Grant is on the $50 bill and Benjamin Franklin on the $100 but that’s about all I know about big time finances, so when I read that AIG is seeking a government bailout or Lehman Brothers needs to liquidate, my eyes glaze over with incomprehension. But I know enough to be scared, even as I hope that somebody a whole lot smarter than I am is figuring a way out of this mess and that they will figure it out before this mess swallows up any more money of ordinary Americans.
The feeling I had in the pit of my stomach as I paid that ATM visit reminded me of something from 18 years ago – when America was just about to embark on the first Gulf War. Those were really unsettling days as tensions heated up, and especially when last-minute negotiations with Iraq failed. (I can still remember NPR broadcasting the news conference from Iceland – or was it Finland – when it was announced by state department officials that the talks were unsuccessful. It meant that war was all but inevitable.) In the maelstrom of discussion that ensued, I heard one commentator mention the concern that an attempt might be made on President Bush’s life. (That’s of course the father of our current president.) I don’t know why that comment tripped my insanity circuit, but the next thing I know I am at Pick n’ Save, filling a shopping cart with groceries . . . a 5-lb. box of elbow macaroni, a 3-lb. bag of rice, 15 cans of Campbell soup, 5 cans of Spaghetti-Os, a package of those little cereal boxes that people buy for camping trips, 3 jars of Tang, etc. etc. etc. as though I were preparing to wait out an oncoming monster hurricane. That might not seem like the actions of someone deranged, but you have to understand that I was a bachelor at the time who was even more enamored with eating out than I am now. In my whole life, I am sure I had never spent more than $10 bucks at one time in a grocery store. . . and when I walked out of Pick ‘n’ Save it was with over $90 worth of groceries. (I might still have the receipt someplace. I made a point of saving it.) And just what I had in mind with these particular choices, I have NO idea. I’d never made a batch of real rice in my life. I hadn’t eaten Spaghetti-Os since I was in grade school. And three giant-sized jars of Tang? It was as though I was preparing for a slow-speed flight to Neptune. But something inside me said that if someone succeeded in assassinating our president, the whole country would teeter on the brink of utter chaos and ruin. Just what elbow macaroni had to do with safeguarding myself against such events isn’t any clearer to me now than it was then.
Thinking about this makes me glad to be married to Kathy – and grateful that she and I are perfect steadying agents for each other, since we seem to freak out at different things. I freak out at frightening news headlines- she freaks out at centipedes in the laundry room sink- and together, we are managing to muddle through life in this complicated world.