Tornadoes
For a girl from the Northwest, tornadoes are an unknown and terrifying beast. Sure, I’ve had my share of storms; ice storms, snowstorms, rainstorms, pine-needle storms. We Pacific North-westerners emerge from our log homes, delightedly palming our chainsaws, clad in flannel and Sorel snow boots, anxious to get all that beautiful felled wood stacked behind our barns and in our sheds, between the trees, in the basement, under the porch, and alongside the cars in our backyard rusty classic car museums. But a tornado?
We arrived in Texas just in time for a blustery spring which came in like the proverbial lion. I’ve never seen such angry, swallow-you-up-in-its-depths-then-spit-out-your-bones thunder storms. Storms that seem as if the skies have cracked in half, unleashing the tears of every man, woman, child, and humane society donation ad dog since the beginning of time.
Speaking of the rain, you know the sappy movies where the fascinatingly dysfunctional couple have just finished a knock-down, drag-out fight? Just as they might have reached some sort of rational conclusion, they are indelibly drawn together in uncontrollable lip-locked fervor… it starts to rain. Oodles and oodles of rain.
Historically I’ve always scoffed at such movies. First, when I’ve participated in such an exchange of “ideas,” the last thing I want to do is ardently swallow Mike Honcho’s face. I am an unfeeling brute like that. Secondly, in the Northwest, if you run around like a yahoo during a spring storm with no shoes, no jacket and a paper thin blue dress…why, you’re going to get hypothermia!
Enter Texas rain. And now I know why those movies are always set in the sweet, sticky south and why those twitterpated fools are always dancing around drenched. The rain is the temperature of saliva, about as gobby and it comes down in the same volume as a non-environmental shower head. Now, there’s also a high chance of getting struck by lightning according to my weather app, but I suppose there must remain some measure of unrealistic romanticism for those movies or else whom would watch them?
I digress. Tornadoes. I am an individual that likes to be prepared for any situation. Laughable really, when you take a close look at the life I live. But still, why not be ready for that which you can control? In effort to be suitably equipped, I made the mistake of getting on YouTube and looking up tornado footage. Now here’s a truth: it doesn’t matter what you’re watching on YouTube, or how good your intentions may be, you will get sucked in for hours. You will emerge on the far side of 2:30 AM bleary eyed and wondering why Dr. Sandra Lee got to be the luckiest lady on earth as Dr. Pimple Popper, or glaring at your worthless dog whose only apparent talent is sleeping for inconceivable amounts of time, unlike YouTube dogs who sing Taylor Swift songs, retrieve their own leashes, and swing new babies to sleep. I digress again.
Tornadoes. I encourage you to NEVER fall down the rabbit hole of YouTube tornado footage. You’ll emerge on the far side of 4:30 AM, crazy eyed and jumpy at every rumble of thunder (an approaching tornado sounds like a train coming, doncha know) and an absolute inability to do anything but stare out the window, where you can’t see anything anyway because it’s still raining torrential buckets of spit.