I swore I’d be more prepared if it ever happened again. Who was I kidding?
I think it’s time to come to terms with what I have always considered a very serious flaw. I’m not a planner. And anyone who knows me would say that’s a gross (in every sense of the word) understatement.
I don’t organize my underwear drawer, I don’t have any idea where my marriage license is, and there are days when I dread having to open the mail. And when it comes to an actual crisis — like the wildfires blazing at this very moment a couple of miles north — I just get paralyzed.
This season, The LA Fire Department has issued a guideline for all of us to follow when faced with the rolling red freight train thundering down our lane. It’s a simple, easy-to-remember survival campaign called, “Ready, Set, Go.”
Clear enough. Easy to understand. Direct. But why I have to skip the first two orders to blitz right into the third one, is beyond me. The LAFD says being “ready” means prepping your home and car with necessities: gathering all the pertinent docs, meds and memories ahead of time. Getting “set” means parking your car facing out of your driveway. And “go” — well, that’s where I come in. I am ready to GO. Let’s get the hell outta here. Just don’t ask me to organize anything before that.
To be honest, I have trouble explaining my “crisis avoidance system” — but it’s pretty clear when someone suggests I prepare— well, they might as well just be speaking Urdu.
My only working theory is that after 25 years reporting thousands of news stories on what could be described as insane deadlines, I got used to the pace. There really was no time to prepare. No time to “set.” We’d get an assignment and have to gather the facts, often in minutes, to make air time. Skipping the first two steps became habit, and then our daily M.O. — always with the goal of being first on the air.
My husband’s theory is that I’m an adrenaline junkie. He thinks I create a last-minute panic because it gives me a rush. As a producer at KCBS-TV News, he witnessed my pushing every story I covered to the very last second — to the point where the director overseeing my live-shot would ask, “Where the hell is Lardner?” My head would pop into frame 10 seconds before the anchors tossed to me in the field. It was a rough way to conduct business. And admittedly very selfish.
But he has a point. And in the end, he would probably be the first to say I can I give up the self-hate for just doing things differently. He might even appreciate the fact that I’m even looking at “the why.” But we’re about to be evacuated from our home right now, so I guess I gotta go.
