Not being a native Midwesterner, I take tornado warnings very seriously. It seems my friends who grew up in this area can hear a tornado siren and just dismiss it like it's somebody else's cell phone ringing. "Pssh," they say, "it's never a real tornado. So ... what does everybody want for dinner?"
I, on the other hand, hear a tornado siren and begin mentally running through every tornado episode of every sitcom I ever watched. Remember the Married with Children tornado? Did they have one on Mr. Belvidere? Wait, where were they supposed to live on that show? What about the one that destroyed the Flanders' house on The Simpsons? More recently, there was the Desperate Housewives tornado, and, of course, the movie Twister. In every tornado episode, there is always a very dramatic scene where the tornado touches down, and somebody -- although never the main character, it seems -- has their house totally destroyed. Cue dramatic music ... a little "We'll get through this together because we're a family" ... then schmaltzy music, hugs, freeze frame, and ending credits.
Seeing as my family would probably not be able to get through a devastating natural disaster, and I base that idea solely on the fact that we still haven't managed to tackle the everyday home-repair task of getting the air conditioner fixed, I began to panic.
But first I went to weather.com. It seemed a tornado had touched down in a city about two miles to the east of us, and although it was heading away from us, I still thought we shouldn't take any chances.
"Get in the basement!" I said firmly in a voice that was just short of actual yelling.
Five minutes later, Bill and Nathan sauntered down.
Bill said, "This is ridiculous, look how clear the skies are."
"Haven't you ever heard the saying 'the calm before the storm'?" I barked.
Nathan indicated that he wanted to stay up and watch the tornado, but Bill said it was too dangerous. In an attempt to instill a little fear in the boy, we spent our entire time in the basement watching You Tube videos of tornadoes.
Then we eventually decided it was safe to go upstairs. No tornado.
Oh, and we forgot to bring Leia down with us. If anyone is going to get sucked up by a tornado, it's a small cat. The visual of a cat flying through a tornado is ...
... Okay, it's kind of funny. Go ahead and laugh. Hahahaha.
But still, I feel bad about forgetting Leia.
So, that is the account of the June 2011 tornado siren incident. It was my third serious tornado warning experience since moving here seven years ago.
My first was during the summer of 2007, when I was at work. The tornado warnings started coming around 3:30, just in time for my 4:00 breast-pumping session. I really didn't know what to do. I mean, I didn't want to be killed by a barrage of broken glass, but, I mean, I really needed to pump. And nobody else in my office was remotely fazed by the warning, so I just decided to just suck it up and pump (no pun intended). In retrospect, a lactation room is actually a pretty good place to go during a tornado, because there are no windows, and this particular one was in the interior of the building.
But, no tornado.
My second tornado warning experience was in the summer of 2008. My little family and I were out doing some errands. Just when I thought we were done, my husband said the dreaded words: "I'm just going to stop in at Best Buy." Ugh, BEST BUY. More like Worst Buy, hahahaha, I'm so clever.
So, I said Nathan and I would wait in the car. Bill went into the store, and a short time later came out and knocked on the car window. "Come into the store for a little while!" he said.
"Ugh, no," I said.
"There's a tornado warning!" he replied.
Now, this particular Best Buy had a very large home theater section, wherein they displayed big-screen TVs and comfortable couch set-ups. Apparently since there were no windows in that section, all the customers were being sequestered there. Nathan was in that annoying stage where he was still very excited about knowing how to walk, and wanted to just walk everywhere, so I mostly chased him around. All around us the big-screen TVs demonstrated just how clear a picture you could get of the imminent destruction that was headed right toward us. Like, seriously, there was a map of the tornado's path, and the city we were in was circled by a giant ring that indicated the tornado. Damn. It was about to get all Twister up in that Best Buy.
(Also, apparently nobody who worked at that Best Buy had a sense of humor, because nobody thought to pull a Twister DVD out of the bargain bin and project that on the amazing big-screen TVs while we were all sitting there.)
But the tornado changed course, and, on a serious note, actually did do some damage in the cities to the south of us.
So, those were my non-tornado tornado experiences. I'm good with keeping them as non-tornado experiences, thank you very much.
"I hate you."
1 comment:
You'll eventually get used to the sirens and watch the sky. I was the same way when we moved here 17 yrs ago and now I just laugh. Besides, we don't even have a basement.
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