10 Things I Don’t Have To Worry About
OK, a very scientific & thoroughly researched post today (not really). I am shooting the breeze with some friends who work at Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) and as inevitably happens, someone brings up a horror story of a daughter/cousin/former roomate getting scammed out of something! This opens the floodgates and by the time the next round comes I am pretty sure that the proverbial “END IS NEAR!”
So I got to thinking…how is that we can joke about this stuff happening to OTHERS? Primarily because it seems so ALIEN to us in our little village life. So here you go - the list of 10 Things I Don’t Have To Worry About:
- 1. No Twin Towers - or rather no population density high enough to attract the attention of anyone looking to use innocent people to attract attention to their cause!
- 2. No smog - EVER!
- 3. No wildfires, no mudslides, no hurricanes, no tornadoes - in exchange for which we gladly navigate the 8 foot snowbanks that pile-up for 4 months of the year.
- 4. No termites - who, like my dad, don’t do so well with the deep freeze.
- 5. No drought, no water bans, no exorbitant water bills - which reminds me of the time that our kids played all weekend on a neighbor’s homemade slip-and-slide and he got a call from Hanover Water Works asking if he had installed a pool without a permit!
- 6. No traffic, no parking problems, no waiting in lines and no soul-crushing commutes. I freak after 5 minutes in city traffic. I just can’t manage it & I don’t know how do!
- 7. No heavy tax burden - no sales tax, no state income tax & excellent public schools. Where do I sign?
- 8. No officious government - a nice part of living in a little town in a little state is that government employees acting the BIG CITY role don’t last long. Need something done?
- 9. No gang activity, no hate crimes, no religous intolerance, no meth labs - I never have to steer clear of places or local news stories to shield my kids from realities they aren’t ready for. I know they exist elsewhere but I am pretty pleased that my kids can wait a year or two more to learn what they are.
- 10. No boarded-up banks - my bank never loaned to an entity based in Phoenix that bought residential developments in Las Vegas using their Miami condos as collateral! You can be PRETTY SURE that you are getting a fair shake when you regularly run into your banker and your attorney at the supermarket!
- And as a special bonus for reading this far…this list goes up to 11 (that’s one higher, innit?)
- 11. No non-native invasive species that will swallow my 9 year old child. Did you read the article in The New Yorker (April 20, 2009, Swamp Things) where Burmese Pythons and African Nile Monitor lizards are LOVING the climate and reproducing even more successfully than they do in their own living rooms? Oh man, I love you winter.