10:04 – The morning paper reports that another car full of teenagers wrecked, this time in Greensboro, which is about half an hour east of us. Four kids in the car. The driver was 15 years old and had no license. The car was going 95 MPH in a 35 zone. Three kids dead, one in critical condition. I’m not sure why this is happening so frequently lately. I understand that teenage boys drive like maniacs. It’s not cultural; it’s biology. High testosterone levels, little driving experience, and a sense of immortality. I grew up in an area with lots of Amish, and I remember the Amish teenage boys holding drag races in their buggies. I’m sure Roman boys 2,000 years ago took similar risks, and Cro Magnon boys 20,000 years ago. But we sure have had a run of these tragedies lately.
There’s probably nothing to be done. When I was that age, our schools regularly showed gory movies like Signal 30, showing mangled cars and mangled people. I’ll never forget the images of Jayne Mansfield with her face ripped off and her head impaled by a piece of pipe. But I’d be willing to bet that not a single kid who ever sat through those movies actually believed it could ever happen to him. It was always someone else.
Barbara will be happy to know that I’m now reasonably happy with our level of preparation for emergencies. As is only proper for anyone who’s writing a prepping book, we’re now better-prepared than probably 99.99% of the population, in terms of both supplies and knowledge. I still want to relocate away from the city, or at least buy a weekend/vacation home up in the mountains that we could relocate to permanently if necessary, but otherwise we’re in pretty good shape. I’ll keep buying small items and more food but nearly all of the major purchases are complete.
Our Amazon Prime membership expires Saturday, and I’m not going to bother to renew it. We haven’t watched any Prime video in months, and none of the other benefits are of any interest to us other than free 2-day shipping. And that’s not worth $99/year, despite the fact that I’ve placed 52 orders with Amazon in the last six months. I won’t have a problem reaching the $35 minimum for free SuperSaver shipping, and in my experience with it before I (re)joined Prime, it usually doesn’t take much longer than Prime shipping to arrive.