Now, let me reiterate, we were not a strong family. We relied overwhelmingly on machines to do our brawniest tasks. If we’d all been alive a century and a half earlier, and attempted to brave the Oregon Trail, all of us, including our oxen, would’ve died from dysentery less than a mile from our house, I’m absolutely sure of it. My family could barely survive driving to a restaurant in the same car; we wouldn’t have lasted thirty minutes in the same covered wagon. And now we faced our very own winter apocalypse.

For five nights, we struggled to keep from freezing. We melted snow on the gas stovetop to use as bathing water. We ate what meager food we had by candlelight. After dinner, I played with my rag dolls and pig bladder balloon while Papa played songs on his fiddle. At night, we all slept in the same room to conserve heat, an arrangement that included our two hamsters, Muffin and Biscuit, whose cages we covered in blankets to keep them from icing into tiny hamster steaks.

As the fifth night began, I’d started to think our supplies had finally reached their end. My body would be found frozen to the floor, clutching my Beanie Baby collection. Archaeologists would conclude I was trying to keep them warm in a final act of selfless love. Museum exhibits would be built about me. “NAMELESS GINGER CHILD FOUND CLENCHING HEAP OF GAY STUFFED ANIMALS. A DISSECTION OF HIS STOMACH FOUND ONLY STRAWBERRY POP TARTS AND EGGOS.”

But, on this very night, just as I was closing my eyes in a peaceful acceptance of frozen death, our neighbors managed to pound away enough ice to knock on our front door and offered to share their spare generator. Apparently they’d been using one since the storm first knocked out the power and had been living in comparative luxury less than twenty yards from where I’d been sizing up which hamster would be the most delicious. (Muffin, because she was a girl and had more voluptuous, meaty hips.)

And so, we were saved. Without the kindness of strangers or the aid of a magic electricity machine, we would surely have died and our corpses preserved like the charred victims of that volcano that killed all those people in ancient times. I mean probably. I’m sure we were totally fine, and my parents will read this and be like, “That never happened, we knew exactly what we were doing, why are you always like this?” But I was nine years old, and it felt like we were definitely gonna die, and the fact that I thought we were definitely gonna die should be proof enough that I clearly wasn’t absorbing any meaningful survival skills. Because that snowstorm was only the beginning of a long series of instances in which my capacity for mastering basic survival skills would be tested.