Homeowner who faced a natural disaster passes on widsom

As you are probably aware, especially if you are one of those people whose
major appliances are still up in trees, South Florida recently experienced
a bad hurricane. So today, as a South Florida homeowner,  I want to review
some of the lessons I learned from this experience --- lessons that I believe
can be useful not only in hurricanes, but in other natural disasters, such as
floods, earthquakes, and children's birthday parties.

The most important precaution, for a homeowner facing a natural disaster is:

1. SELL YOUR HOUSE BEFORE THE NATURAL DISASTER OCCURS.

Trust me, this simple step will save you a LOT of trouble. My wife, Beth, and I
are still kicking ourselves for not doing it. When we heard that Hurricane
Andrew was headed directly at us, we rushed around doing things like putting
patio furniture inside, securing doors, etc. What a pair of morons. We should
have used the time to sell the house to somebody and let HIM worry about the
patio furniture.

Granted, at that point there probably was not a large pool of qualified buyers
available, so we might not have gotten absolute top dollar:

Us: So, do we have a deal here?

Prospective Buyer: Let me get this straight. I get your house, and you get...my
BIKE?

Us (driving a hard bargain): AND your skateboard.

Prospective Buyer: I have to ask my mom.

If you are foolish enough to keep your home, you should definitely:

2. SEARCH THE HOME FOR WORKING DRUM SETS AND DESTROY THEM WITH AN AX.

We weathered the hurricane in the home of some friends who are normally sane
people, but who allowed their 11 year old son, Trey, to purchase a used drum
set THE DAY BEFORE THE HURRICANE. Here's the thing about drums: They don't need
electricity. They are designed to function perfectly during a natural disaster.
This means that at 2am, when the power went out and the night was black and the
wind was shrieking and the eye was approaching and we were sitting in the
darkness, rigid with tension, terrified about what was going to happen, fearful
that the house might BANG BANG BANG WHAMMMA WHAMMA WHAMMA OHMIGOD WHAT'S
HAPPENNING?!!?

Ha ha! It was only young Trey, sensing somehow that this was a superb time to
practice. So we all had a good laugh, and there is a stron chance that some of
our hearts will eventually resume beating.

3. DESTROY YOUR GARDEN HOSE.

Few people realize how dangerous a garden hose can be. I found out while
attempting to siphon gasoline into a chainsaw so I could locate our house,
which was somewhere inside a mass of fallen trees approximately the size of
Cambodia.

We had obtained the chainsaw from these men who sprang up all over the place,
mushroom-like, immediately after the storm. They were selling truckloads of
powerful, potentially lethal chain saws to South Florida homeowners whose
experience with dangerous tools was pretty much limited to corkscrews. I
watched a TV reporter ask one of the chain saw sellers if he had any Safety
Tips for the viewing audience. The man thought for a second, then said, quote:
Chainsaw don't know the difference between a LAIG and a LAWG."

Bearing that safety tip in mind, I unpacked my new chainsaw, and determined,
using mechanical aptitude, that you had to put gasoline into it. I decided to
siphon some out of my wife's car. My wife's car is her pride and joy, and it
spent the hurricane inside the garage; a tree landed on the garage, but the car
was undamaged. So I cut off a length of garden hose, and stuck it down the
car's gas pipe, and --- I bet this NEVER happens to criminals --- it got stuck
in there. When I tried to pull it back out, it broke. Which means there was
four feet of alien garden hose somewhere deep inside my wife's car. And you
just KNOW the mechanic is going to tell me that the only way to fix it is to
replace the engine, perhaps several times.

This is why you need National Guard troops in disaster areas. I needed a
National Guard troop to come into my garage and shoot me in the head. That
would have spared me from having to go into the house and tell my wife that on
this day --- a day when our trees had been knocked down and our roof damaged
and our other car bashed up by roof tiles and our neighborhood strewn with
debris and our roads blocked and our power knocked out for what looked like
several weeks --- that on this day, the first thing I had done, the first step
on the long road to recovery, was to screw up her car.

When I explain this to the mechanic, he'd better not laugh at me. I'm going to
have the chain saw running by then.