Good Question November 16, 2007

*Reposted from Journalspace

Repentent asked me a question in the comments of my last post—

What would be in the trunk of your car if you had a trunk?

My last car had a trunk. I carried everything in there but the stuff you would expect to find in a car trunk—or the boot, for my friends in the UK. There was a spare tire and a jack, of course, but I’ve never carried the things you’re told to have in case of an emergency. In Los Angeles, we’re always waiting for The Big One. (Get your minds out of the gutter, you dirty monkeys. We’re talking about earthquakes here.) We’re told to have an “earthquake kit” in the car. Stuff like water, food, spare clothes, a first aid kit, and the such should be kept in the trunk of your vehicle. I know that all makes sense, but any food in the trunk won’t be there for long because—earthquakes or not— I’ll get the munchies at some point and have to go foraging for food. I hope we don’t have big earthquakes soon. If we do, maybe I’ll be stranded outside an AM/PM or something. No, wait–make that Gelson’s. I’m not spending what could be my last hours on earth eating AM/PM hot dogs.

So what did I have in there? Books. Lots and lots of books. I had textbooks, magazines, fiction, non-fiction—kind of like a library on wheels. I had a copy of Dracula, pinched from an Irish library, that my then-boyfriend sent me. There was a copy of Justine by the Marquis De Sade, as well as a book about the lives of saints. In the event of an earthquake I was going to be like the Burgess Meredith character in the Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough At Last”. I would have plenty of books to read, all the time in the world in which to do it— and then I would step on my glasses.

I’m going to put together an earthquake kit for my trunkless car. I’ll have to remember the books. And my spare glasses.