"It Won't Happen To Me"

I don't understand this mentality. This "Oh, it won't happen to me." When I hear people say that, I want to say, "Why not?" Anything can happen to anyone. Sure, we prepare and take certain precautions so certain things don't happen to us, but overall, anything can happen to anyone.

There is a mother dying of cancer in our school. A mother I know very well. I have never blogged on it. I have never once thought, "Oh that could never be me." I don't walk around waiting for the shoe to drop, leaving my children motherless, but I am fully aware it could be me as well as her. There's no reason she got what she got. It could have been me. But it wasn't.

I have a couple friends who have lost children. I went to the funerals. I have never said, "That could never happen to me". Once again, I am not making myself sick awaiting the shoe to drop, but I am fully aware, just as one friend's toddler died of SIDS, it could have just as easily been me.

And so I look on in utter amazement as people who live on barrier islands are refusing to evacuate. Did they not see that people actually died during Ivan? People in Grande Lagoon, thinking they could ride it out as they had in the past, washed away. The authorities are telling people if they won't evacuate, they want the names and phone numbers of next of kin so they can be contacted when these idiots die.

I just shake my head in disbelief. Anything can happen to anyone on any given day. It is a fact.