I Like How We Drive Right into the Tornado
On my way to school this morning I thought, Gee it feels like it might rain today.
On my way to class today I thought, Gee it’s raining.
On my way back from class I thought, Gee, it stopped raining.
But no.
Because it wasn’t raining earlier this evening (and because I don’t listen to the news and had no clue about that tropical bitch of a storm named Cindy), Marc and I decided to drive down to Fayetteville. It’s my only free night this week, and I had to pick up some things from the house. And since I don’t know when my family will come back, I decided to go ahead and get my stuff before I disown them. We made it to the house and decided that we would raid the refrigerator first. Before we could even microwave a frozen dinner, the news popped up and informed us that we were under a tornado warning. So Marc and I went to the most central location in the house (which happened to be my sister’s bathroom) and waited. As stimulating as the bathroom is, however, I got bored and refused to wait any longer, especially when the weather seemed like it was letting up. So we ate. At around 8:00 we decided to leave because the weather was getting worse and we wanted to make it home. So we drove. We drove about twenty feet past my driveway and had to stop. My street was flooded. But, because I refuse to be defeated by atmospheric conditions, I drove through the small rushing river and made it through my neighborhood. Everything was fine until a car drove past me heading in the opposite direction and “splashed” water on my car. Only rather than a splash, it was more like an effort to drown my poor car. But, luckily the ghetto darling kept going. We made it up Old National with no problems (except for few near death experiences, but trust, I kept control). Finally we got on 85N. But it started to rain harder, which basically means that rather than driving through rain, we were driving through a curtain of constant water. At this point road markers and lines became mere approximations. Cars just took direction from each other and made sure to stay a few feet away from each other. At one point the car in front of me drove through what seemed to be a small puddle, but the water kept rising and the car kept sinking. Sadly I was right behind this car, which meant that my car experienced the same sinking feeling. I kept driving, since that was all that I could do, but the water just kept rising. I expected to feel water around my feet at any moment. Luckily both my car and the car in front of me made it through, but only because we forced our way over to the far left lanes. After this experience I was literally drained and tired of driving through what felt like a water-ride gone wrong. I hydroplaned my way up the interstate and got all the way to the Pine/Peachtree exit. Then traffic halted. Just stopped. And stayed stopped. I would’ve put my car in park if I didn’t have to use a paperclip to shift gears. Marc and sang along with the radio for awhile. Until we found ourselves singing Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” for the third time. Then we realized that we were tired of sitting in traffic. At that point we turned our attentions to the road ahead of us and tried to figure out what was taking so long. At first we thought small accident. Then we thought big accident. Then we thought flash flood. Then we combined all three. About an hour and a half later, we began to move. We cheered happily until the tanker next to me tried to run me off the road. Apparently he was a little overexcited. I quickly erased my happily cheerful face and gave him the ever-so-uncheerful skank face, and he stopped just shy of my passenger door. It turns out there was a small flash flood underneath the overpass and some cars floated away. That’s no good.
Finally (FINALLY) we made it to the Northside Drive exit. Howell Mill was only one exit away. Marc and I were ecstatic. After two hours of craziness we would arrive home. But no. Because right in front of the Howell Mill exit was another small flash flood, too deep for cars to drive through. I couldn’t even get angry. All I could do was wear the sad face. And with the sad face I was determined to get around the water. So I moved over as far as I could, held my breath, and drove, and we made it to the exit.
Our apartment complex is not flooded. The drama is over. I’m drained, tired of water, and extremely proud of my car (despite its bootlegedness over the past few days).
Good night.