Strips
Tall Tank Tales
Snooze Button
Remember those? Snooze buttons on alarm clocks. Hell, does anyone even remember alarm clocks for that matter? What’s to get up for these days?
When I was younger I had to get up for school each day.i didn’t care for school. Each morning I would slap the snooze button on my clock and try to enjoy another 9 minutes of sleep. As if that would have some soothing effect on the rest of my day.
The comet ended all that. School too, for that matter. Now I wake up to the cry of wild animals and the hot sun in my face. There’s no snooze button for those wake-up calls. Sometimes I wish there was. The joy of waking in a cozy, soft bed are long forgotten. These days, without my tank, I would barely have cover from the night. Of course there’s booga. He makes a nice cover from everything...:)
I remember going to the beach during summer vacation and the yucky feeling of getting sand in my bathing suit. Now, I live that feeling every day. Sand in your clothing and hair is just part of the daily way out here. it’s really hard to be a girl. You know? Like doing girly things that make you feel feminine. Hunting for food and defending your life kind of rob you of your girly side - if ya had one to begin with.
I don’t want you thinking i’m a whiner all the time. Sometimes it’s just healthy to let it all out.
Worlds collide in my mind. The world I grew up in and the one I now survive in. Simple joys of days gone by are so precious as those things may never surface again in my lifetime. i’ll never forget the day I ran out of clean clothes. The awesome horror of the comet’s destruction hit hard on the minds of the survivors. I was one of the lucky ones - those who lived. Many say the dead were the real lucky ones, but you have to deal with whatever life hands you. I often wish I hadn’t been handed shit.
Anyhow, amidst the aftermath, everything went to hell. its actually hard to recount the story with any accuracy as things happened in such a chaotic fashion. But for a former girly-girl shopping was pretty cool. Anything that wasn’t destroyed, was free for the taking. Some stores had lots of clothing available. Others were blown to hell and the clothing strewn all over.
Suffice to say, I had a lot of nice clothes from this post-disaster scenario. I had ball gowns, wedding dresses, sexy little tops - I had it all. Of course there was nowhere to go in my fine new threads. in fact, the first thing I got rid of where the numerous pairs of high heeled shoes. My mother had never allowed me to wear heels, so there was a natural craving for them. So glamorous. So sexy. Yum! But, alas the wasteland is no place for a sexy gown and high heels.
I changed my view on style of dress. Ya gotta carry what you own, so I soon became regaled to shorts, t-shirts and boots. Boots were the new luxury in post-apocalyptic times. Then it happened.
I would toss aside clothes as they became filthy. Soon I realized I would not have any clothes if I kept this up. Reality sank in. No more clothes, no laundry and no new clothing being delivered to fancy department stores. None. Nothing. And underwear became a prized possession.
Hardly a day would pass that a marauding gang would try to mess with me. I did my best to ditch em, but occasionally I had to fight off the gangs. I became quite a fighter, but knew that this was no existence that I could tolerate for the duration. Time to leave town. Not town in the traditional sense, but I needed to get out of the area. Find a place to make my own.
Getting to this place meant further sacrifices. if ya can’t carry it, ya can’t have it!
Now I was really low on clothes and morale. Can’t wander the planet naked... I didn’t think so anyway. Gathering my things and walking away was the scariest thing i’d ever done. Unsure what I was leaving behind and totally unsure of what lay ahead. Fuck.
I feel disoriented telling you all this. its so damn hard to keep things in the right order. But I was telling you of the harsh reality of living off what you can carry. I couldn’t carry all that much...
After wandering on foot for a couple of days, I was dirty tattered and hungry. Then I met my mate for life...