EXPERTS HAVE CONFIRMED! "Very Bad Things Can Happen!" Based on this recent report, Monday morning of this week an entire town nestled in the hills of the Mark Twain National Forest in south-central Missouri stayed in bed. By that afternoon a few brave souls, prompted by pangs of hunger, cautiously made their way to their pantries and cupboards opting for dry and canned goods, afraid to turn on stoves or ovens, and disbelieving the "best by" dates (or lack thereof) on their refrigerated goods. Most adult residents, in fact, have instructed their younger children to unplug all electrical items and/or persuaded their taller children to turn off circuit breakers. By nightfall on that first day, journalists from surrounding communities could hear cries of fearful anguish emanating from darkened homes. Despite facts to the contrary, conventional wisdom has taken hold of this previously idyllic Ozarks community and will not let go. The foreboding despair is most commonly communicated in the oft-heard belief that "the world is going to hell in a handbasket." More individual and specific interpretations involve various catastrophes including war, communism, terrorism, greenhouse gases, meteorites, intelligence, floods, wildfire, pagans, foom, nuclear accidents, minorities, earthquakes, pandemics, progress, sinkholes, a wayward black hole, gamma rays, immigrants, journalists, asteroids, super-volcanoes, immigrant journalists, famine, planes falling from the sky, rational thought, a 400 pound hacker, corrosive rain, alien invasion, solar flares, robot uprising, vampires, Pandora's box, and giant flesh-eating spiders.
Asked for comment on Tuesday, the White House released the following statement:
"Fear. Yes. That's good. Great! And terrific! Tremendous progress! That's like, really smart. Very bright! Because you know, what with, and if fear were IQ'ed, it would be, well, really scared. But Russia and Fox News; and with the help of the space force, rapists would be really, really scared like the freshmen at Wharton and maybe you could stop hiding. If, like, OK, if like we all hide under our beds, the voters that count wouldn't vote. But fear; it's good, like really smart. Just come out to vote."
Late on Tuesday, the situation worsened when the lone homeless man in town, with no place to hide, changed his sandwich board which had previously read "The End is Near" to "I Told You So."
And then in support, on Wednesday morning, a neighboring community promised to build a wall to completely encircle the fear-stricken town further protecting it from outside evils; provided (of course) that the community-in-crisis pay for said wall. A prototype is being built and admired now.
On Thursday FBI hostage negotiators were on the scene and the National Guard established and maintained a perimeter, which aided the neighboring community to approximate the size of the wall and prepare an invoice. The two lead negotiators though did not accomplish much, spending the morning debating if the people were the hostages or if fear was being held hostage, and if the former, discussing how best to negotiate with fear. They finally agreed that the people were the embodiment of fear, thus fear was in command and neither negotiator wanted to negotiate with the disembodied voice of fear. So they finally settled on the strategy to send in a non-threatening girl scout troop to sell cookies in order to coax the people to their doors and back into the light of day. But these negotiators had obviously never seen the South Park episode in which a girl scout was revealed to be the Loch Ness Monster. The situation worsened.
On Friday, nothing happened; which of course sent the already terrified townspeople into a heightened frenzy of fear because they suddenly and collectively realized their greatest fear: to work and worry and live and die for nothing. Even giant flesh-eating spiders were better than nothing. And no matter how hard the girl scouts and their leaders, (who had taken over for the FBI), worked to convince them that love and compassion and individual purpose and girl scout cookies were not nothing, the panicked citizens were dubious.
Finally, as day broke on Saturday morning, help came from an unexpected source. The homeless man---(Remember the homeless man?)---The homeless man once again had changed his sandwich board and with the aid of a purloined megaphone walked the streets with a message that appealed to both the embodiment of fear and the disembodied voice of fear:
"THERE IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF!"
Upon hearing this, two twelve-year-old twins, a brother and sister, looked at each other and simultaneously thought, then said, "I can live with that." They then led their parents and neighbors and ultimately the entire town back into the light of day. Refrigerators were plugged back in, questionable cheese was consumed, and productivity once again found its place in this charming Missouri town.
