Currently on Nova: Megavolcanoes. I’ve already seen the Discovery Megavolcanoes twice, now for the PBS version. I am fascinated, horrified, will lose sleep over this. Back when I lived in Chicago, there was talk of some asteroid hitting the earth in say 2035. My bosses looked at the coverage in the Chicago Sun Times, and uniformly agreed without much ado that this would be just fine with them. I balked.

“You’re kidding, right?”

No, they weren’t.

“I’m going to be 85 at the time, near death anyway, what will I care?” they said.

“But,” I stammered, “Don’t you want the world to go on without you? Don’t you want people to talk about you when you’re dead?”

Somehow in the middle of a water cooler conversation, I’d revealed my everything, my hand, my psychological profile. It didn’t help that they were all psychologists. They asked more. “What exactly do you want people to talk about, Penelope?” Such an unrealistic expectation; one looks like a fool just for bringing the possibility up.

And its difficult to explain why I’d want people to talk about me after I couldn’t weigh in on the topic, because god knows so long as my heart beats I am terrified of gossip. I know a few folks who will drop this line in a conversation just to watch me quiver: “So …

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