Where's a bamboo cloth when you need one?

      When I was a little boy — maybe 9, 10 — I would take an empty amber prescription bottle and create what I considered "a survival kit." I'd tuck in a needle and thread, and a tightly folded dollar, a couple blue tip matches and ... I'm not sure what else. A peppermint, maybe. Pack the thing with necessities. 

     I don't recall toting it around much — and never actually using anything in one for any real world purpose. My memory is primarily of assembling them, fitting the various elements inside. 

     You don't need to be Sigmund Freud to figure out why. It's a big, scary world, and a little fellow wants to be prepared. Nothing shameful there.

     So I get, conceptually, the idea behind the VSSL survival tube I saw for sale at the Mazda dealership in Evanston when I went there to get the filters changed on my CX-9.  In case you can't read the little canisters, there is a fire-starting kit and a candle, fishing tackle and a bamboo cloth, first aid tape and a water bag, all in an attractive gold-colored aluminum tube.

    That isn't what jumped out at me. Try to put yourself in my shoes, and look at the photo above. What is the element that grabbed me by the nose and twisted? That I couldn't quite believe.

     One hundred and seventy-five dollars. At first, I thought this must be an excess of the dealership — they do soak you. But no, VSSL is some weird generic high end brand that is applied to audio equipment, coffee and "gear" that comes in aluminum tubes.  That seems the going rate.

     Actually, my very first thought, at the price, was to wonder if there might not be a missing decimal point. Maybe the thing was $1.75. Matches. A little candle. I checked with the clerk. No. "Do you sell any of these?" I wondered. 

     Contrast the slim pickings above, most of which you could assemble from your kitchen junk drawer in five minutes for nothing, with the below survival kit I noticed on Amazon for less than a third of the price. An axe, a shovel, a tent, a lantern, ropes ... 268 pieces. Quite a lot really. 

     Maybe because I'm so sunk in routine, I don't worry quite much anymore about being ready for any proximity. Or maybe caution is so inbred into me at this point, I don't notice. If it might get cold, I'll throw a fleece in my bag. If hot, a bottle of water. If I'm going to be out at mealtime, I'll grab some insulin. But not even in a fancy kit, which are also sold. I carry the injector pen loose, in my pocket, along with a two-tablespoon screw top plastic container I tuck in a couple cotton rounds and two needle tips (since a clumsy diabetic can, in theory and confessing nothing, manage to bend the first needle against a restaurant table while trying to administer it, and need a second one). 

     I think I have a flashlight in the map pocket of my car door. And a bottle of water in the back. But that's about it. Anything else can be managed with a phone and a credit card.

     I wish EGD had a wide enough scope that I could reasonably expect to hear from somebody who actually bought such a tube and found it useful. "My Mazda seized up on the roadside and, thank God, I had a fishing line in one of the little cylinders..."

      It makes sense when you view it as another entity turning fear into money. There's a lot of that going around.