Clean-Hands Insurance Against Hurricane Sandy

When Hurricane Sandy struck our state, for some reason, it didn't really put the lights out for us.  79 percent of our town lost power, but we only had a few flickers on the evening of the storm, like a child playing with the light-switch, and we lost power for a short time during the following afternoon, probably because they had to shut off power to our neighborhood to fix the wires without worrying about electrocution.

But even if we had lost power, we would have been all set, because Ian thinks ahead for the whole family.  He has the inventive creativity of his mother's side and the irrepressible frugality of Scottish Dad's genes - recessive, in my case, but back with a vengeance in Young Ian.  And this powerful combination of genetic endowments make for unprecedented innovations, such as the water-saving policy Ian introduced anticipating that our well-pump might be out of commission if we lose access to electricity.

Specifically, Ian diligently filled up the bathroom sinks in each bathroom with nice, soapy water, so that when we go to wash our hands, we wouldn't waste this precious commodity with prodigal single-use drainage. No, sir - the plug was in place in each bathroom sink, and the water supply came pre-enhanced with soap.  No need to worry about where your stream of water will come when you most need it.

It is very fortunate that we didn't lose power, because it turns out that Amy and I are both lacking the forward-thinking thriftiness of our collective ancestry.  We actually ended up squandering the soap-water reservoir with each hand-washing episode, and I think we would have been deeply humiliated if we had lost access to water and found the sinks-of-plenty emptied out at the critical moment.  To his credit, Ian continually refilled them, to maintain a reliable store.  So even with our wasteful ways, we might have been able to keep our hands squeaky-clean for the duration of the outage, if it had actually taken place.

(October 29, 2012)