''Women and children first!'' I thought that I was fairly clever for coming up with that line, back when I was on the Titanic, right after it hit that bit of ice. Before that it was ''Every man for himself.'' I was nine years old at the time and weighed-in at about 65 pounds--not much of a match for the swarthy guys coming up on deck after abandoning their posts in the engine room. Before that, no one had thought much about honor when it came to disasters like a ship sinking in freezing water with not nearly enough life boats to go around. I can't believe that my quick-witted appeal to chivalric orderliness actually worked and I'm still here today to write about it.
What I didn't think about back then was that every time I looked both ways before crossing a street, with every helping of vegetables I finished, with every disease epidemic I side-stepped, I was aging myself right out of the proverbial lifeboat. A plea for ''women and children first'' would leave me second, at the very best, and probably farther behind in the herd than two fat, ugly girls in line at a gay night club.
It's been quite a few birthdays since ''women and children first'' would have assured me a comfortable seat in a lifeboat. Trying to sneak on board by wearing a diaper and a bonnet are so far beneath my acceptable levels of dignity (and they are low, trust me) that even treading water in the freezing ocean rates higher. Perhaps this ''women and children'' thing partly explains the frighteningly high number of female impersonators on cruise ships plying the North Atlantic these days. I've never been able to walk in heels, especially on a pitching deck in bad weather, so that option is out for me, but you keep doing what you have to do. I'm not judging anyone.
Women and children first? Are you kidding me? Now that I am neither I would use either as a human shield to keep me out of harm's way. Evidently they have laws against that. I'm waiting on my court date for that incident when I put the baby carriage between myself and that out-of-control cement mixer. I know it sounds terrible if you heard about it on the news but you have to remember that I was wearing a new white shirt.
I'm not about to go down with the ship so it's time to come up with a new personal safety plan for when the going gets tough, because ''the tough get going'' also leaves me dog-paddling far from shore. I need a new strategy for my personal survival and I think it will take more this time around than a catchy little phrase.
I have decided to look towards the animal kingdom for my personal protection. I'm not talking about an attack dog; I have decided to go more state-of-the-art. Borrowing from the natural defense mechanisms of turtles and porcupines, I have designed a pair of protective suits that I can wear that will assure my blood doesn't get spilled. I now have two prototype suits: one made out of razor blades and another out of barbed wire.
Both suits performed well in tests. They not only fended off muggers and wild animals but they even kept all but the most persistent Green Peace volunteers at bay. Before I unfold the big banner that says ''Mission Accomplished'' I have to point out that the barbed wire suit makes me look fat and I can't find a pair of shoes to go with razor blades. I don't care how safe something is; I have to look good.
Kevlar body armor, pepper spray, fluorescent vests, rape whistles, life preservers, helmets, knee pads, and safety glasses are all fine. I mean, I don't leave the house in the morning without suiting up with all of them, but these products can only give you a certain level of protection. They can't provide the kind of live-forever, last-man-standing guardianship that I'm looking for these days. I was even thinking about wearing one of those suicide bomber vests filled with plastic explosives. If I am going out I at least want to take as many people with me as I possibly can. Call me old fashioned but I find comfort in that.
In the end I settled for what everyone else I know uses. I now have two Hummers with blacked-out windows: One for my driver, two bodyguards, and me, and another for an accompanying infantry platoon. This ''Baghdad Carpool'' style is a little heavy-handed and clumsy but it commands respect when I pull into the video rental place by my house. ''Move it or they'll open fire'' isn't quite as catchy as ''women and children first'' but it's surprisingly effective.
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