weather and me

Being from the Great Basin I never thought much about what I would do in a tornado situation.

Sure, we had the earthquake drills every year (because, as was the buzz around our elementary school, each year was thee year that the fault hugging our neighborhood boulevard would violently give way) but a tornado? That was something that happened in places where people had shaky video cameras and southern accents.

These were the thoughts that crossed my mind as I sat late at night in our stuffy bathroom staring at the old can of baked beans I had clumsily taken from the pantry and listening to the who-knows-what-sized hail batter our windows. "What does one do in this situation? " I thought. "One certainly doesn't just sit here staring at baked beans reminiscing about the good ol' days when it was unlikely earthquakes we were worried about."

Earlier, as the tornado siren blared it's warning through the air and before the baked beans we checked the national weather service to "make sure" and as I read over the storms predicted path I saw our little town mentioned followed by, "STORMS MOVE QUICKLY. TAKE COVER NOW!"

And that cover, in our apartment sans basement, is our little bathroom.

I gave our Survival Radio/Flashlight a couple good cranks on the charger and attempted to tune the station to something other than country music without much luck and in the end settled on a tune about a man's truck and his dog. We listened for a half second frightend by the thought that this could potentially be our only link to the outside world during the storm. "At least we know there's still a radio tower out there," we said trying to laugh.

And the tornado never came. And the hail stopped, and the warning was lifted, and the trees settled down. And we started feeling stupid about actually being afraid. I watched as the sky sparked with a million bursts of lightning and the clouds rumbled in frustration.

And even though this tornado never materialized just like that terrible earthquake we are supposed to get back home some day, I'm still amazed at how flippantly our weather can forget about us, almost like a bad friend, as if to say, "I'm getting tired of you and I don't care about you and never have. And I don't care how that makes you feel," knowing that we'll call again the next day needing a friend.

And now that I've gone all Ira Glass on you, I promise not to start my next post with, "Our show today - in three acts..."