The Hysterics of the Past 88 Years

How often does Mammaw's 88th birthday fall on a blog-posting day in the year of a supposed apocalypse? We don't have to be math geniuses to know that clearly, this will happen only once. I thought that since today is a special occasion (also the anniversary of the Salem Witch Trials), I would examine the impending apocalypses of the past 88 years.

Mammaw was born on March 1, 1924, the year that Vladimir Lenin died. Following are my top eight picks for the Impending Apocalypses of her lifetime, in chronological order:

1. The Sacco and Vanzetti execution. Their deaths are a symbol of the Red Scare for secondary history teachers everywhere. Paranoia was rampant during the Red Scare, and anti-immigrant feelings for people coming into the U.S. from southern and eastern Europe may have contributed to their convictions.

(On a positive note, in between items #1 and #2 fits the invention of sliced bread. So, whenever you hear anyone talking about "the best thing since sliced bread," what they really mean is "the best thing since 1928.")

2. The Stock Market crash of 1929 and the subsequent decade of Great Depression, including the Dust Bowl. If you think the unprecedented number of natural disasters and the scarcity of jobs are bad now, you should read The Grapes of Wrath. Yeesh!

3. World War II. Included in WWII are whatever sinister forces allowed Hitler to come to power, the Holocaust, Japanese-American internment, and the invention and subsequent use of the atomic bomb, which has now advanced to even gnarlier bombs. I'm pretty sure 1939-1945 were probably the scariest years humanity had ever known up to that point.

4. The creation of the state of Israel. Someone's been threatening to bomb someone else over it ever since.

5. McCarthyism, a.k.a. "Red Scare Part Deux," or, "We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Red Scare." ARE YOU OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY!?!?! (To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For this reason I recommend pausing your blog-reading here and immediately watching the film Good Night and Good Luck.)

So tempting, but...nah. We're not going to talk about disco.

6. Jim Jones and the whole Kool-Aid incident.

7. Y2K. Remember that? That was actually pretty funny.

8. The Global War on Terror. Which reminds me, Global Thermonuclear Warfare is still trending #1 on the doomsday dashboard at 24%.

These eight are only the examples that I know the best from what have probably been hundreds of world-ending freakouts that Mammaw has lived through. It may be a childish thing to say, but I have always been of the opinion that if you have seen that much in your lifetime, you pretty much have the right to say and do whatever you want. But that's just me. For all of us, let her life so far be a lesson in the fact that no matter when and no matter where, the world is always about to end. Our task is to start where we are and prepare ourselves the best way we know how. The best way *I* know how is sideways. And very carefully.