A weird world
There was a tornado in my valley this evening. It was 40 miles away in the Big City, no where near my house. But, heh, guess where I was? Directly on that spot at that time. I was on my way home from seeing the retina specialist, who had done even more torturous things to my eyes. They were hurting, I was feeling nauseated from the trauma, and it was raining cats and dogs. Someone said there was a tornado warning, but, whatever. I dashed through the rain to my car and headed out onto Main Street in Springfield at 4:30.
Things got dicey from there. The wind picked up and started shoving around my little Honda Civic. Then the rain turned to hail and stuff started slamming into my car as I crossed the Connecticut. By this time I was having one of those "WTF, this isn't normal" feelings but, hey, what am I going to do? I just drove on.
The clouds over the river made me nervous in atavistic ways, but I didn't see anything twirling... though I *did* feel moved to look. I hydroplaned at one point on the flooded highway. I got home to discover that, according to the news footage, I was directly beneath the tornado. At least one person is dead. But not me.
I grew up in Southern Michigan where tornadoes were a fact of life. They tore up trees at my elementary school and my Dad's farm. A tornado when my mother was a child had taken her parent's barn and one took my paternal grandparent's barn when I was an infant. A neighbor of my Dad's had his house picked up off the foundation and set back down ... four inches off kilter. I spent plenty of time in basements as a child and know tricks like diving into ditches and getting under the car.
So it's not like I don't know tornadoes. But here? In Western MA? We get something called "microbursts" from time to time. But funnel clouds? I have never had that happen in my entire adult life. I totally did everything wrong.
I'd say I got lucky, but, uh, wouldn't "lucky" mean that I wasn't at the retina specialist having sharp pokers poked in my eye so that I was unexpectedly at that place and time? I'm having trouble feeling the love.
Things got dicey from there. The wind picked up and started shoving around my little Honda Civic. Then the rain turned to hail and stuff started slamming into my car as I crossed the Connecticut. By this time I was having one of those "WTF, this isn't normal" feelings but, hey, what am I going to do? I just drove on.
The clouds over the river made me nervous in atavistic ways, but I didn't see anything twirling... though I *did* feel moved to look. I hydroplaned at one point on the flooded highway. I got home to discover that, according to the news footage, I was directly beneath the tornado. At least one person is dead. But not me.
I grew up in Southern Michigan where tornadoes were a fact of life. They tore up trees at my elementary school and my Dad's farm. A tornado when my mother was a child had taken her parent's barn and one took my paternal grandparent's barn when I was an infant. A neighbor of my Dad's had his house picked up off the foundation and set back down ... four inches off kilter. I spent plenty of time in basements as a child and know tricks like diving into ditches and getting under the car.
So it's not like I don't know tornadoes. But here? In Western MA? We get something called "microbursts" from time to time. But funnel clouds? I have never had that happen in my entire adult life. I totally did everything wrong.
I'd say I got lucky, but, uh, wouldn't "lucky" mean that I wasn't at the retina specialist having sharp pokers poked in my eye so that I was unexpectedly at that place and time? I'm having trouble feeling the love.