What If ...

What if the fire due west from me about 5 miles last evening wasn't contained? The 40-50 mph winds have been pounding us for weeks, especially in the late afternoons and evenings, and last night was no exception. The brush fire that started at the intersection of I-10 and an off-ramp was in a direct line from my community, with little but dry brush and a few desert homes between there and here. If the fire fighters hadn't been able to get the resources to the fire quickly enough, rather than 60 acres burned, there would have been disaster because the winds are still blowing this morning. Fire + winds = no stopping a fire until it has consumed all the available fuel in its path.

What if the teen circumnavigator had perished at sea? Would her parents still be telling the media that she needs to follow her dream? Or would the parents rue their lack of wisdom in encouraging this young girl to do something too big too young in her life? When we are teens, we all want to do more, to go farther than anything we've ever known, to succeed beyond our wildest dreams -- and our perceived limitations of our own parents' lives. Again, it's all about putting an old head onto young shoulders to give the perspective of both time and wisdom, but what if the old heads had prevailed when the young folks wanted to head west in their wagon trains? Sometimes, life gives us difficult choices to make.

What if the uncounted ballots had not been counted? According to the on-going tallies, there has been absolutely no change whatsoever in the outcome of the voting process last Tuesday. That's hard to believe, but apparently is true. Counting literally as many uncounted ballots as were counted for the precinct total has had no effect on the outcome of the election. The margins between winners and losers is identical, so it really hasn't mattered that 130,000 cast votes were not counted before releasing the "final" results of the election. There goes the old theory that MY vote can make a difference.

What if everyone listening to Geraldo this morning, who was ranting and raving about the residents of the oil-effected shorelines who are waiting for "someone" to clean up the mess, heard what he said? He echoed my earlier thoughts: everyone report to the shoreline. Suit up and start removing whatever floats in to containment barrels instead of calling the 1-800 number to file a claim against BP. If you aren't part of the solution, you are simply contributing to the problem. This is OUR country, so let's do it. Get the job done: stop waiting for someone else either to clean up the mess or pay to have someone do it for you. It isn't BP's problem, it's YOUR problem, so fix it, people.

And what if I locked up the house, got into my RAV, and took off for a couple of weeks? Could I take the dogs with me and just be gone? Why do I always worry about all the possible problems, rather than just do it? I spend so darned much time in "what if" land that I'm just not having fun.