Don't laugh: I have an Ebola plan

I've long prided myself on being one of the sane ones – a woman far too rational to be spooked by amped-up predictions of death, doom and despair.

Back in 1999, I teased friends mercilessly when they expressed alarm over the Y2K bug some predicted would send planes plummeting, render credit cards useless, and maybe even trigger nuclear disaster.

I laughed so hard I had to take a couple of extra puffs on my inhaler when my well-intentioned mom sent me an email suggesting I don a surgical mask during the SARS threat of mid-2003.
"You live in Southern California now," wrote my mother, a French native who now lives in Mississippi, using the dreaded all-caps font she loves to abuse. "You know bad things happen out there. You need to be responsible – be safe. Take care of your lungs and get yourself one of those masks, now."

"My. Mom. Has. Lost. Her. Mind." I informed my lifelong best friend, another one of the proudly sane ones.

Thinking back, my friend and I – and others from our generation – have lived through several predicted disasters that never quite happened.

In preschool, my parents fretted about how we would survive the upcoming Ice Age.

Later, we learned Halley's Comet was plummeting toward Earth to annihilate us.

And wasn't that rogue planet, Nibiru, supposed to have smashed us all to bits already?

These days, it's the Ebola virus that's supposedly coming for us all.

Another hyped-up disease said to be on its way to ending life as we know it! Hilarious, right?

Uhm, sure.

Being a reader and a thinker, I've carefully read all the reasons I shouldn't worry.

I realize Ebola doesn't travel through the air, and to become infected, you would need to be in direct contact with an infected person's bodily fluids. I also understand that killing the virus outside of the body and preventing its spread is easy. And yes, I know even if you are unlucky enough to get the disease, your odds of surviving it are greater if you have access to quality healthcare.

This all makes so much sense.

Yet in reality, while I've been trying to keep up the illusion I am still one of the cool ones – the people far too intelligent to be frightened by a virus that's likely less of a threat than the flu – I'm actually a bit unnerved.

For me, two things have changed since earlier scares like SARS and Y2k.

The first change is a personal one: When other disasters like SARS loomed large in the public eye, I wasn't a parent.

My unencumbered, childless state made it easier for me to be brave. Like it or not, parenting has turned me into a coward. I can deal with my own mortality all day long. The mortality of the two children who are the center of my universe? That one's not so easy.

I worry about my kids' safety in a way I've never worried about my own, or even my husband's (sorry, honey!). The threat of watching my kids suffer and being unable to help is nightmarish stuff.

And there's another reason I am more nervous about potential disasters now: Hurricane Katrina.

That evil, deadly storm shattered my innocence, stripping me of my childlike faith that natural disasters were never as bad as predicted, and that when bad times did hit, the government and its resources would swoop in to make things better for all Americans.

Lives were unnecessarily lost in Katrina. Help was horrifically slow to come – especially to seniors, to children, to the last and the least among us.

Watching desperate people on the news from my home in Southern California, while my parents in Mississippi weren't reachable by home phone, cell phone or computer, made me realize how limited both our technology and our government can be in an emergency.

Now that Ebola looms and my family is living only 3.5 hours from where the disease has been identified?

Outwardly, I'm still that tough-talking girl I was back when Y2K loomed.

I make jokes about how my nine-year-old son appears to be trying to grow his very own strand of Ebola in his messy, borderline toxic bedroom. I gently tease the soccer moms who are questioning whether our upcoming soccer tournament in Dallas should go on as planned. And I chuckle about a person I know who has already been convinced she's contracted Ebola – twice.

I still scoff at the worrywarts. That's what smart, rational, fact-focused people do, right?

Yet when my mind is quiet and no one is around, I'm making a careful emergency plan for my little family.

I have a place in mind where people travel out of the county rarely, and outside influence is minimal. I know where we would sleep, where my dog would stay, and what food we would eat while we were there. There's a plan in my mind for who would cook when, the conversation I would have with my employer about my absence, how my kids would continue to be educated, and how I would handle people concerned that our urban-dwelling family would bring the virus with us. I even know how I would ultimately try to repay my host family for the free housing.

So, I'm still too cool for that wild, over-the-top public fear and anxiety.

But I'm not so cool that I can't imagine a widespread Ebola outbreak that puts us in immediate danger.

That's because I'm old enough now to know that sometimes, dire predictions really do come true, scientists don't know everything, and the government can't keep us safe -- and because the all-consuming love of parenthood can lead to a streak of insanity that just can't quite be overcome by intelligence or research.

Yes, I've mentally made my worst-case scenario Ebola plans. And no, I won't tell you the name of the charming little Mississippi town I have in mind. We can't all go there, after all. There's not enough room, and an influx of people would put this isolated dream town at risk.

Besides, I know you're really just laughing at me.

And I can't even blame you.