Summary: A few years ago, I received a letter at the parsonage where I live with my family. It was on heavy paper - even heavier than the kind they use to tell you that you've been accepted to college. It almost declared its own momentousness, that paper. In fact, for a moment, I wondered if someone had left the church a big bequest in their will, and I worried that someone had died and I hadn't written them a note. But it turned out not to be that. Mercifully, nobody had died without telling me. Actually, it turned out to be something far stranger. Because what it was, was a letter from a company that made VIP panic rooms, or, as they preferred to call them, "safe rooms." "The world is a troubled place," it explained. "But your home, and your loved ones, should always be secure." Who could argue with that? The letter went on to explain that they could design a room within our house, complete with its own power source, communications hub, ventilation system, secure entry, weapons cache, food preparation area, full-spectrum lighting, hidden or public as I preferred, and designed to whatever specifications I chose: perhaps I wanted a wood paneled study with button-tufted leather chairs and cut crystal whiskey glasses, like an English gentlemen's club; or perhaps a western-themed ranch longhouse effect, or even a speakeasy with a pool table and a bathtub...I think the bathtub was for making gin, or something. I found myself idly wondering if that one came also with a machine gun, and I suspect that the answer was that it probably could provided, of course, that I were willing to pay for it. could not help but reflect on what kind of a panic room I might want.
