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How to Survive

10.October.04

While flipping channels tonight I found a show on the Animal Planet’s Wild Animal Survival Guide. My channel-changing finger stopped functioning when I saw Colin Mochrie in a red jacket giving advice on how to survive an encounter with a Polar Bear. I love him on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, so I thought I’d watch for a bit. After all, you just never know when a Polar Bear might come strolling into your yard. When did Polar Bear encounters become a problem for the general population? OK, maybe for Canadians like Colin, but not so much for us down here below Latitude 47°.

I would have preferred a survival guide on encounters with teenagers or Vice Presidential Candidates, not that the latter is much of a problem these days. Anyone seen John Edwards lately? I keep expecting to pick up a carton of milk and find his smiling face beaming out at me. Ok, all right. I did see him during the Vice Presidential Debates the other evening. At least I think it was him. It was hard to tell, what with all the mud being slung around. Someone should have told me to put my hip waders on before watching. In fact, a disclaimer ought to be added before any such debate. Did I say debate? I meant mud-slinging contest. It would have been more fun to watch had they invited a Polar Bear and then wrestled.

Since the journalistic community is abdicating it’s responsibility by not teaching the general public how to survive encounters with things best left un-encountered, then I feel it’s my duty as a pseudo-journalist to fill that void.

Pamela’s Guide on Encounters of the Uncomfortable Kind

    Teenagers: This species, more commonly known by it’s slang name, Pimpleoneous KnowItAlleous, are easily recognized by their uncanny ability to ooze sugary substances at you in order to gain their goals one minute, then switching to fiery darts of sarcasm the next. Unfortunately for you, these wily creatures have evolved to the point where they have learned how to operate motor vehicles. Hiding your keys is not always the answer to this prickly and dangerous problem. Should you encounter one of these shape-shifting beings, toss your keys at them and run. It’s your only hope.


    Reality Shows: Apparently this soul-sucking phenomenon has proliferated to the point where you may be faced with their unpleasantness with the mere change of a channel. Unless you are Growing Up Gotti, and your Fear Factor is set to low, you will not be able to Elimadate this experience unless you remove all televisions from your home. I suggest boxing them up and sending them to the producers of said garbage with notes telling them that they are apparently one of the signs of the apocalypse and you won’t be needing your TV any longer as the world is about to end because of their stupidity. Then go read a book.

    Heavy Bass Beats: While driving you are often afflicted with a person in the car next to you who believes that you must share his love of music, or at the very least, his love of bass. This kind of music attempts to stop your heart with it’s deep pounding rhythms. Here is the remedy: When you are stopped at a light next to such a being, get out of your car, clutching your chest and grimacing. Go over to the obnoxious person’s vehicle and lay down in his hood. Stay there. Pretend to die. Writhing is good, denting his hood is even better. When he gets out to see what is wrong, jump off the hood, slip into his driver seat and rip his stereo out with your bare hands while yelling incoherently about the beast attacking your chest. He’ll get the idea.

    People Who Vote Democrat/People Who Vote Republican: You know who you are. There is no tried and true manner to deal with these people when they are telling you that your vote counts unless you are voting for the opposing candidate. Unless you can teach them to think outside the box and vote for Dave Barry, you have no hope of helping them back to the land of the sane. Slip them a valium.
In conclusion, I’d like to say that there are many more things and/or persons you could conceivably come into contact with that will cause the Shock and Awe, the Duck and Cover, the Stop, Drop and Roll urges. Although I can’t cover them all here, I would suggest that you always wear your tinfoil hat to stop Patriot Act from infiltrating your brain, always look both ways before crossing the street and make sure you have on clean underwear in case you encounter a Polar Bear in your back yard.

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editor's note: due to stoopid people who can't behave in public (ie, spammers) we have had to turn off the comment feature on our older columns. We'll try waiting a while and then turning it back on to see if they get bored and go away. In the mean time, we will manually add any REAL comments if you email them to us. The link is below.

Pamela, Because my ex-teenagers are now 26 and 27 (and,therefore, no longer make me suffer), I love it when your columns remind me of the many special joys that teenagers give their parents. Ah, thank-you for taking me back to those good old days! Mud-slinging. Oh boy. Yes, we certainly need "hip waders" these days..... But we might be wrong to think that today's mud-slinging is the worst it's ever been. When I read the long and fascinating biography of John Adams, published a year or so ago, I was flabbergasted to learn that the mud-slinging of the press back then was much more despicable than anything we're seeing today...... I too despise reality shows (and most TV, actually). I also despise ridiculously-loud car stereos that make the ground shake. How I wish I had the courage to do as you suggest..... But DON'T get me started! Who knows, let's all vote for a Polar Bear, and all our troubles might away......... Thanks for the laughs, and don't forget to vote! (unless you vote for the opposite candidate) Claudie
Claudie Aguilar
TX USA -
Dear Mrs. Lambright....would you like me to post your message to a certain someone living in Utah? I'm sure he'd be interested in hearing that you're his Mrs. And go clean your room!
The Author
USA -
"Writers are cannibals . . . It's a terrible thing to be the friend, the acquaintance, the relative of a writer." - Cynthia Ozick hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
MRS. MATTHEW LAMBRIGHT
USA -
I love it Pam! Yes--we have a bass boomer on our block who especially loves to blast by at just about the time the neighborhood Moms are trying to get their kids to sleep. Unfortunately I think he belongs in one of your other categories--the pimpleus one. He belongs to one of those same neighborhood moms, so send her a prayer. I too hate the whole reality tv thing. though have watched occasionally in a kind of OMG I can't believe people watch this stupor. Does that count in Neilson ratings? If so I'll have to lie. Thanks for making life so funny.
Lisa Shirah-Hiers
USA -
Pamela - I'M WITH YOU!!!!! Especially when it comes to clean underware in case of a Polar Bear attack! Also, if my mother/grandmother is to be believed, the said underware needs to be hole-free as well--as if the emergency crew had never seen blemished items before! Just the trailers for the Survival/Reality Shows are enough to turn my stomach. Your answer to that intrusion is by far the best! Thank whatever gods there may be for Public TV. However anyone plans to vote, I truly hope s/he will DO so, and then after Nov. 2nd we can get on with doing something about our myriad problems instead of trying to talk them to death instead of solving them. Keep smilin'--as you continue to help me do! Lou
Mary Lou Lyman
TX USA -
Dear Pamela Love the "other name" for the teenage species !!! Where DO you come up with these gems!! Your mind is just way too quickwitted for most !! And, like you I love Colin on Whose Line is it Anyway? but can't imagine that we would need the polar bear survival class any time soon.... especially here in FL. !! That bass vibration is one of my biggest peeves so I will have to let you know if your survival guide proves to be worthwhile for me or if it causes the guy behind the wheel to turn it up even louder to bounce me off the hood of his car!! Thanks for the laughs!
Lee Ambrose
FL USA -
I wonder if Valium works on Polar Bears? Humm, would Polar Bears work on Valium?
Con
Edinburg, TX USA -
HAHAHAHA!!! Very practical survival guide, Pam! Some of those things might be a lot simpler to solve if polar bears were a problem here... Teenagers would be lunch. Polar bears would win over the heavy bass. tv? What tv? The polar bear destroyed it... And there would be fewer people arguing over stupid politics and more people banding together to do something about the polar bears! Keep up the fun!
Jeri Lynn
Shoreline, WA USA -

Scripts modified from Matt Wright's guestbook. His scripts can be found at Matt's Script Archive

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