I was at Walgreen’s yesterday when I overheard a man at the pharmacy counter asking for face masks. “This is our last box,” the pharmacist said. The man glanced around to see if anyone was looking. I swear he gave me the evil eye right before he snatched the box from the pharmacist’s hands and hid it in his basket.

Despite reading that the masks may be pointless, I’d already looked for them. Out of a mild sense of self-respect, I had refrained from actually asking for them. Now, apparently, it was too late. If swine flu swept the city, my family would be mask-less.

The self-tanned man in line behind me at the check-out had a basket full of hand sanitizer. I realized I’d neglected to buy any. From the looks of his basket, I figured he’d gotten every bottle. “I’m on my way to Cabo,” he said. “No way I’m giving up my vacation.” He spotted the guy who had scored the last box of masks. “Those don’t work,” he said cheerfully. “The flu particles are too small.”

Chatting it up with Vacation Man, I pretended that I, too, was not alarmed, and wished him good luck on his travels in Mexico. Back home, I secretly went on Amazon and ordered a box of surgical masks. Then I thought of my sister in San Rafael and ordered a box for her. Then I realized they also come in size small, so I ordered another. By the time I recovered my wits and logged back on to Amazon an hour later to cancel my order, it was too late. No one will be more surprised at our stockpile of face masks than my husband, who is the most non-alarmist person I know.

I’m no stranger to Stockpile Syndrome. I grew up on the Gulf Coast, and have vivid memories of trips to Delchamps every time a big hurricane was on its way. Invariably, by the time we got to the store, the canned food aisles were empty, the jugs of drinking water were gone, and there was no peanut butter in sight. We’d scavenge what we could and haul our meager provisions back to the car, resigned to the fact that, should this be a big one, we would have to survive on non-brand cola, Fig Newtons, and Vienna Sausages.

When Hurricane Frederic came around in 1979, we left town. We returned a few days later to find the giant oak tree in our front yard shorn to just a couple of limbs, blocking access to our street. We had no power or water. Fortunately, we had a Doughboy pool. And a lot of Vienna Sausages. While that pool was certainly one of the trashier parts of my childhood, it happened to be a great boon to our neighborhood. For a couple of weeks after the hurricane, the neighborhood kids would show up at our house with buckets and pitchers, pots and pans, which they’d fill up with water from our pool. They took the water home and used it to flush their toilets.

I blame my alarmist nature on Mister Skippy cola and gelatinous Vienna Sausages–bleak vestiges of the unprepared life. But alarmism has its advantages. Should this thing turn out to be as bad as some think it might, I have no dirty pool water to offer my neighbors. I have no hand sanitizer. But I do have a lot of surgical masks.

Has the swine flu scare activated your latent Stockpile Syndrome? Have you purchased anything you ordinarily wouldn’t in preparation for the worst?