There's no little black dress for that

I’ve always said that I don’t wear dresses because, when I do, I feel as if I am not fully prepared for an emergency.

What if I had to run through tall weeds, brush, deep snow or a nonmigrating flock of mosquitoes? What if the emergency called for fighting fire or high winds or blood-thirsty porcupines?

What if it’s 20-below zero? I’d frostbite my legs. What if it’s 105 above? I already have a farmer’s tan on my arms, do I really need an Armani tan on my legs?

What if I had to pull alongside the road to change a tire or to perform CPR or an emergency splenectomy? I’d have to be all “Oh, sorry, I can’t do this operation without something to kneel on. Here, just help me pull the jacket off of this unconscious gentleman. Yeah, that’ll do it. Now hand me that bottle of whiskey sterilant and a scalpel, and we’ll yank us a spleen out before he wakes up.”

And very few dresses go with practical footwear — essential gear in almost all crises. Trust me on that.

The problem with my theory is that it has a great big hole in it that’s the exact shape of the indent my lazy behind leaves in my recliner.

It’s been bothering me a little that, dress or no, I as a person am not fully prepared for an emergency.

It might be that I am wrong-headed in my criteria for being a worthwhile person (though that is highly unlikely) but I judge people’s worth according to whether or not I would want them on my zombie apocalypse team.

No, I don’t think there will be an apocalypse, zombie or otherwise, but still, I admire and gravitate toward those people whom I believe would be useful in a crisis, especially one of zombie apocalypse proportions. It’s a valid form of evaluation. It’s just an updated version of “Who would you want to stranded on a desert island with.”

Just look at some of the mad skills my friends possess: EMT with remote-country survival and rescue training, gardening, hunting, a veterinary medicine, cooking, fishing, expert driving and towing, construction, sewing, electronics operation, equipment operation, canning and general food preservation, logging, airplane pilot, leather working, livestock handling and more. And that’s just the chicks.

The guys can do some of those things, too, plus: mechanic, heavy equipment repair and operation, knapping arrowheads and other blades, bullet casting and reloading, and more.

You probably want to join my team, too, now.

I don’t have a single person I call a friend that I wouldn’t invite, or beg, to be on my zombie apocalypse team.

Sadly, more and more I wonder why they would want me on their list of potential team members.

One day last week after making the statement that Andrew Zimmern from the Travel Channel program “Bizarre Foods” could be on my zombie apocalypse team, I finally said, “But I don’t know why anyone would have me.”

My husband then won a first class, all expenses paid, gold plated, get out of hot water free card for looking right into my eyes and saying with very convincing sincerity: “You could cook up a batch of cat meat and make it taste good. And you’d be just the kind of chick to do it, too.”

I was a little taken aback.

I mean, I know he’d noticed that I have what you might describe as a streak of bluntness and ruthlessness in me, but I never knew before that he actually admired it.

And to be honest, I never really thought of those qualities as unique skills to bring to the team. It made me feel a little bit awesome.

Ad Notice: Ruthless leader now taking applications from qualified people to fill out remaining membership of a bad-A zombie apocalypse team. Losers, wimps, whiners, lazy-brain people and dress-wearers need not apply … unless you wish to become bait in a wild zombie-ambush scenario.

(I think that ad copy spells things out pretty bluntly at [email protected].)