Comin' to your place. No way, Grasshoppah.

I'm an ant. If you're reading this, you're likely an ant too. A like-minded co-worker and myself were talking amongst ourselves about the upcoming political change, the historical surge in firearms sales, preps each of us has done general (always nice to compare notes), and the fact that he has on order 2 rifles for more than 45 days from a local shop. At this point, Ms. Nosy Noneofyerdamnbusiness pops around her cube and remarks, "Well, if things get that bad, I know 2 places where we can come." (Ms. Nosy is a product of the improved public school system, people don't need guns, U.N. good, America bad.)

My co-worker was quicker on the draw than I was and deadpanned back to Ms Nosy, "If you get past the fence and the dogs, then you're welcome to stay." Which left me with simply..."Y'all can come on over to my place, but we won't be there, because staying put is NOT in our plan." It's really for her own good, you see. I wouldn't want her and her family to have to compromise their principles of being near evil guns and things of the like just to have someplace safe to go to.

Apparently Ms Nosy thinks it's not enough that I and every other working person on the planet including herself already have a significant portion of our incomes confiscated for the purpose of subsidizing the perpetually lame and lazy. Somewhere in her misguided passive/aggressive sense of self-entitlement she thinks that I or my co-worker would voluntarily just assume her and her family as one of our own.

So, I posed to her 2 rhetorical questions...
"You've heard what our concerns are, and what we're doing to try to mitigate them as best we can. If you share similar concerns, which you probably do or you wouldn't have been eavesdropping, what are YOU doing to put you and your family in a better position if those concerns should actually materialize? Second, what kind of person refuses to prepare themselves or their families for a possible emergency and would instead rather rely on the charity and kindness of strangers to provide for you?"

Then, I told her, "I'm not passing judgment by any means, but my family is too important to me to rely on strangers' benevolence to see that we're taken care of in an emergency. In any emergency situation there's only so much help to go around. Katrina, the Tsunami in Indonesia, Quakes in Iran...If we don't have to accept any help in an emergency, then that help can go to someone else unprepared who really needed it. Someone like you."

I think she got the point. Either that or she was just really pissed off.

There's nothing wrong for preparing for something that might never happen. If it only happens once, you've put your lineage head and shoulders above all of those who did not. Think about it. Even brand new cars come with jacks and spare tires.

In the parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, when Winter comes it's always the grasshopper looking to leech off the hard work of the ant. I don't mind sharing with, or even sacrificing for other ants, in fact I encourage it! I do however, have a difficult time rectifying the notion that somehow the grasshopper is entitled to anything beyond that which I or my fellow ants may or may not choose to give a grasshopper. I resent it even more when an even bigger insect "makes" me give to grasshoppers who aren't unhealthy, or unable but simply perpetually lazy; under the auspice of "making things fair."

The figurative Winter's a day closer than it was yesterday.