With all due respect and proactive apologies to the Bulgarian American Association and all Bulgarian embassies and consulates - maybe the proverb means something in Bulgaria, in the US, not so much.

Bulgarians on the whole have had a harder life than Americans. They have a much longer history. Byzantines, Ottomans, you name it, Bulgaria has seen the conflicts that make the US Civil War pale in comparison. They even have a mighty river in the Danube, and over time I'm sure lots of folks have crossed it hand in hand with the Devil.

I'm a firm believer that different cultures create different sustaining myths, the thing that gets you through the day and hard times. I see it every day with a Russian friend, an old Soviet who has a distinctly different sense of living. He says Americans are afraid of death, and our focus on preparedness is a manifestation of wanting to stay alive at all costs. To him our focus on safety, even fire alarms, warnings about carbon monoxide from bad furnaces and cooking indoors, its all hooey. Not long ago a nightclub in Moscow burned down and killed hundreds, we had entirely different views on that. Its not that he is ignorant and I am smart, its that he and alot of other Russians grew up with a different sense of how to live their lives. And I don't think he sees being "afraid of death" as being a real weakness, its a response to living that has worked pretty darn well for most of America for a long while. It does constitute a gap he can't easily cross through, being who he is.

Here's my response to the proverb - if TEOTWAWKI happens, the Bulgarian next door may respond differently than the rest of your non-Bulgarian neighbors.