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lostgirl
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the wind is howling through any crevice it can find and my bedroom windows sound like they want to give up on restraining the elements to the outside. i flip over to the weather channel to see if there are severe weather alerts. none. yeah, okay, well, this one sounds like it wants to take trees down.
when i was young, i was quite terrified of wind. scared to the point i would literally run to the cellar when the wind rustled the trees enough to let them show their duality of coloration as they blew about showing both front and back. likewise, i was not fond of the black and white portion of the wizard of oz as a kid. weird, huh? well, i found out later that when i was just 18 months old, that there was a strange storm, not a tornado, but enough of a wind enturbulator that our home's roof partially blew off. apparently the trauma of that stuck around....living in my head until i was 20 years old. my parents didn't think it was important to let me in on that event for some reason i may never understand.
it was only after i moved to iowa that i conquered it. see, in iowa they really do get tornadoes. there is very good reason to be afraid of wind when you live smack in the middle of the flat midwest, and when mother nature kicks up her heels people pay attention.
and so a day arrived when the thick sky turned that peculiar shade of green, and i thought, "okay, this is it." the sirens went off to warn folks that tornadoes were imminent. scared shitless, but model citizen that i was, i trucked myself to the dank cellar of my apartment building.
and guess what...there wasn't a friggin' soul down there.
"what the hell is this?" i wondered...
not loving being down there alone and frightened pale, i tentatively climbed back to ground level to peek outside, only to see that it was as dark as dusk at three in the afternoon. but, more interesting than that was the fact that most of the building's residents were in the parking lot drinking beer and smoking weed, just waiting for a look at a funnel cloud. severe weather became just another reason to celebrate, and man, party we did. i must have figured my psyche could use a reprieve. the storm was a big one, and we were duly rewarded with a funnel cloud. no tornado though...
ever since that day i have been an avid storm watcher...and a lover of weather of all kinds, especially thunderstorms and severe winter weather. (i really dig thunder_snow.)
and after that day my fear disappeared...and now i watch and wait, looking forward to the storm_coming.
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100627
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