After a recent event that shall now be called the "Mini Apocolypse Of 2013" or "MAO2013" (Mrs. Mao was the name of an evil teacher I had in grade 8, so it's fitting) occurred, I have now been ensured that we have become the stupidest animals on this planet.
July 19th, 2013, this was the day that we had a very minor storm. Not even a storm. It just rained, thundered and we also had lightning. In Belleville, Ontario, a small city of less than 50,000 people, you think we could handle it, but no. It all started off with giant winds, beginning around 2pm, in which I had donned a pair of sunglasses to stop small bits of dirt from entering my eyes, which sounds more painful than it actually was. I acted like I was dying, running to the car with my hands over my eyes, like the intelligent human I am.
Later that day my mother and I decided to go out for dinner at the fanciest place in all of the land: Denny's. On our drive we quickly noticed the slightly greying skies over the train station. I didn't say anything because of my desperation for pancakes, but I had a bad feeling about this storm. We continued driving and
this vine was created.
Little drops of rain began plopping the car window but it was just drizzling once we got out of the car to enter Denny's.
We stride through the doorway to immediately be greeted with the most generous flickering of lights and the extinguishing of power. Luckily Denny's runs on gas, so we could still have food, and we agreed to eat in the dark, by the window to allow a bit of light in.
It felt like a 50s diner. I was just thinking "So this is what it feels like to eat in a diner with no air conditioning, it feels like the 50s". I felt pretty classy, I mean, as classy as one could feel in a Denny's with no electricity or air conditioning.
I envied this time in society in which there was no air conditioning. Why? I just thought of the pit stains people were allowed to flaunt. But now you have $20 deodorant you can buy if you sweat like that and basically everywhere is air conditioned. But if you are like me and you sweat excessively for a 17 year old girl (not disgustingly, just enough to be annoying) and you have sensitive skin so you cannot use said deodorant, pit stains are something you must flaunt, whether you want to or not.
Anyways, to continue with the storm story, the first chaotic event occurred. It started pouring rain in buckets, which only lasted for about 10 minutes... but that wasn't the worst part.
It was just my mom and I, along with 2 families with kids and one other table of two women. The one table had a fairly young-looking baby (as compared to an old looking baby) that began crying, and luckily only cried once. A man asked whether or not there was light in the bathroom to change him and the manager responded with "no" and offered him a flashlight. He then proceeded to ask if it was fine to change him at the corner of the restaurant. She just let him go for it.
Now, now. I know that it is pouring rain and everything, but it's not time to start acting irrationally. Nobody needs to change the baby in the area in which everybody is eating food. You can use a flashlight in the washroom.
I mean, I get that it's not a big deal and everything, since there weren't that many people there. But at the time we were all sitting in this non-air-conditioned Denny's and all I was thinking was "please don't smell bad" because that shit will spread like wildfire. Literally.
It's not the freaking apocalypse, there's no need to start changing your baby everywhere.
Luckily, it did not smell in Denny's. Usually this type of thing would be chill with me. Sure, change your baby on the Eiffel tower! Who cares?! But at this point, I didn't want my 1950's diner dream to come crashing down with the distinct smell of baby urine.
Soon after we were done eating, the second chaotic event occurred. After the waitress spent about 5 minutes doing grade 6 math, since the machines were obviously down, our bill was brought to us. Now, did we have money? Nope. Notta. They don't accept cheques. They don't accept non-automatic visa. Come on! We are classy motherfuckers. We aren't trying to scam your fancy establishment of $19.64, we just don't have money! Cleverly, I reached into my own wallet and came up with $17.76 which I didn't realize I had. My mom had the rest in change. We paid and left about a .40 cent tip.
My mom was stressing over this a lot. She kept saying "This is so cheap of us!" "This is such a cheap tip!". Well what am I going to do? Start doing stripteases for the families and waitresses? No! It's not air conditioned enough and I am not wearing my cute underwear.
I was just thinking "Mom! Come on! According to that father over there, frivolously changing his baby once again, it's the apocalypse! Who has time to leave a tip? We're going to die!".
So we left, surviving.
At this point, the barely-apocalyptic rain ended as we jumped into the car to drive back.
Since all of the power was out, we had to go through 4 intersections with no traffic lights.
Now, I am not sure how smart you are, but when the power is out and there are no traffic lights, what do you do? You treat it as a 4-way stop. This means that cars take turns going. They wait, look to see who is next, then go. I would know this, I just got my full G-license earlier that morning, before MAO2013.
But what happened? The third chaotic event. Nobody knew what the fuck to do. Nobody was using their signals, I am pretty sure everybody was yelling in their cars. One car at a time? Nope! Let's just have 4 cars go at once all coming towards each other. That's how driving in apocalyptic times works, right? Just drive towards each other! God will lift your cars above each other. Nope. Not at all.
So basically people just started driving when they felt like it. Like "Oh! I feel like it's my turn, but really, I am behind 3 other cars in front of me. So I am just going to honk my horn!".
It's not the fucking apocalypse guys! It's just a storm!
My mother and I escaped, surviving.
We drove back home after the 3 Chaotic events occurred (hey, rule of 3s!). And guess what? Nothing was wrong. The power was on at our house, the rain didn't drown anyone and our car was now shiny from the rain. So hey! We're alive AND we have a shiny car. We were one amongst many (all), who survived the chaos of MAO2013.
I have learned a couple of things from this experience:
1) Nobody knows how to drive in Canada. I got points deducted for looking at a hotdog stand while driving on my test this morning. These mother fuckers were inching into the intersection and then jetting on through like a dinosaur was about to eat their faces.
2) Denny's without air conditioning feels like the 50s
3) People have no idea what to do in storm-like situations. We will all die while trying to google it on our phones. "Oh No! That movie I watched yesterday only taught me to keep calm in these situations! Now what do I actually do? I'll just pull out my iPhone with 3G... and nope!". People will drown in a puddles, change their babies on tables at Denny's. Not much else. Then there'd be the odd person that knows what they're doing and they'll be fucking queen of the world, while the people from Jersey Shore and the Kardashians are drowning in puddles and the nerds are running to the bookstore to figure out how to swim in the puddle, fully realizing their phones won't work.
Geniuses we are. The smartest animals ever. If it fucking rains like that the ducks don't start shitting all over the pond in unusual ways in which they don't normally do. No! They just continue their duck-business. What do humans do? Forget how to drive and spread their feces rapidly.
