I grew up in madness. My parents were both doomsday preppers who—I don’t
really want to say that they took it too far—but I eventually came to decide
that they weren’t looking at the threat the right way. Is it possible that
the world is going to end? Yes, of course. Is it rational to prepare for
this eventuality? Assuming it doesn’t interfere with your day to day life, I
would say so. That’s where mom and dad got lost. They were so obsessed with
the life they would lead if the proverbial esh ever hit the fan that they
stopped caring about what life should be like before, or instead of.
It wasn’t this sudden thing that they did. It’s not like they read a bad
news story, and decided to stuff the family into the bunker, and shut the
door behind us. They just gradually spent more and more time focused on it
until it was all they thought about, and it was just the way we lived. The
farmhouse above ground was only there for show. They actually damaged parts
of it to make it look abandoned, so any would-be looters or opportunists
wouldn’t think it was worth ransacking. Where once I had my own bedroom, I
now shared a corner of two triple bunk beds. My two younger brothers and
sister had one set, and I slept above my aunt, who was above my parents.
They shared a twin bunk, they were that committed to the lifestyle.
The house was fine, and the world outside was too, but no, we were sardines.
Because if that bomb ever went off, or a pandemic killed everyone, the best
way to be ready was to simply already be doing things how we would when the
day came. They still let us go to school for a while, but eventually decided
it was too risky to have us wandering the surface. They didn’t even apply to
homeschool us, or anything. We just stopped leaving the house. That’s when
the authorities stepped in.
Truancy laws are taken very seriously in my country. If you didn’t go
to school, you better have a damn good reason. Legislatures even stopped
accepting the excuse of needing the kids to work on the farm. Being accepted
as a homeschool was tough, because you had to prove you were a competent
substitute for a licensed professional teacher. So you can imagine that they
were pissed about our situation. It almost got us taken out of the house,
but my parents reluctantly agreed to let us go back. But no extracurricular
activities, no parties, and no trips. We mostly only went to school. Once a
week, father would go out to check the post office box, and it was a real
treat if one of us got to accompany him. Once a month, he would restock
us—or overstock—on supplies, and he usually needed two of us to help.
I honestly don’t know where they were getting their money. This was before
working from home was a thing, and since we stopped planting crops, that
surely wasn’t it. Maybe one of them came from a rich family, and we lived in
squalor because they were clinically insane. I’ll tell you one thing, as
terrible as it was, I can’t say I regret any of it. I was designated the
family medic, because someone had to do it, and none of the adults was smart
enough to pursue the field. I learned some skills on my own, picked up more
when they let me out for classes, and got even better when I finally went to
get certified as an EMT, and later a paramedic. Of course, I left to live my
life, and my siblings followed suit with their own dreams. The youngest had
the hardest time, because the parents didn’t want to let her go, but they
had no choice. We didn’t want to survive if it meant not living. They both
died in that bunker, and I’m in my five bedroom split level, surrounded by
loved ones.
No comments :
Post a Comment