A cautionary tale of how a family full of geeks can carry a thing too far.
On Saturday, my family got together to see the new Star Trek movie, eat homemade pizza, an enjoy the good company. Well, we really just wanted to talk about how cute our babies are, but who can blame us?
Star Trek was great. One of the first scenes is, naturally, a bar fight and I was thinking, “Fisticuffs! No movie is complete without a good bout of fisticuffs!” It made me think that fisticuffs is a wonderful word and highly underutilized. The movie really is great and I loved all the inside jokes for the Trekkies. I appreciated that it explained the universe for the uninitiated. Catch it while you can in the theater or before you get sidetracked by one of the many other great things coming out this summer.
Over delicious pizza, I brought up a very serious topic: What the family plan should be in case of a zombie attack/outbreak*. As soon as I mentioned it, my brother said in jubilation with hands in the air, “Thank you! It is about time someone brought this up!!” He was obviously relieved someone else has been as concerned as he as been. What followed was a detailed discussion on the pros and cons of various plans.
We think the safest place for our family would be the Lake a la Rochester, which is about 3 hours away. If we made it there, we could live out on my parents’ pontoon boat. Obviously, zombies can’t swim, so out on the water would be the best place to hide. We could take excursions to shore to gather supplies as needed.
The problem is that Mr. R and I live on the south side of Houston. I am concerned about getting across the city. Mr. R thinks we can do it if we circumvent some of the major road ways. I observed that, as in hurricane season (which is now upon us! already!) I need to keep the gas tank full in the car. No more getting down to Empty. You never know when you may have to escape a zombie horde. Or a hurricane.
My brother pronounced this plan sound and proceeded to discuss the kinds of shotguns he thinks we would need to repel an attack. While the family Rochester does own several guns among us, (sadly none at my domicile) not one of us has a cricket paddle which served Shaun so well. My brother thinks a double barrel, sawed-off shotgun would be a fun zombie weapon, but my dad countered that gun would only be good at short range. My brother wanted to argue the coolness factor though if you are running for your life from zombies perhaps cool is not the most important fact when choosing a gun.
The conversation went on and by the end I am almost certain that my mother, sister, and father thought the rest of us were crazy. Perhaps. But we will be prepared.
–Jane, we could always resort to fisticuffs
*Mr. Rochester and I started talking about escaping zombies after watching 28 Weeks Later. Not because the movie was good. On the contrary, it was horrible for so many reasons it is hard to describe them all in a way which makes sense because the movie itself is ridiculous and requires the absence of all sane logic and reason. The first movie, 28 Days Later was great. This one, not so much with the good.
