On storms
Hurricane Agnes plowed across Pennsylvania when I was barely seven years old. I remember being terrified and crying as it started up and my mother having to comfort me to get me to go to sleep. Late in the night my sisters woke me up and said, "Come and see the hurricane." We sat in the living room of our little house and watched trees whipping more violently than I had ever seen before (and have rarely seen since). My fear turned to fascination, and then to a rather bizarre sense of hubris. Outside the window was a very savage storm and there were heavy objects flying through the air, but here we were safe and dry inside.
I remember thinking something like the child's equivalent of, "Oh, yeah! Uh-huh! That all you got, Bee-yatch? Bring it on!"
Afterward there was no power and we had to get water from a tank truck parked at the end of the road for a few days. The rivers had all overflowed their banks and the front page of the Evening Bulletin had pictures of coffins floating in people's front yards from cemeteries that had been deluged, but we ourselves were fairly unscathed. My cousin's house had been flooded and everything within washed away. My mother told me, "Renee doesn't have any toys now," so I gathered up some of my Tonka trucks and wooden Little People to give to her. That really was the greatest impact on me personally, and it just added to my sense of, "Nature, yo' a pussy!"
Thereafter I tended to look at storms as something to be challenged. It was almost a personal thing: me against the lightning. My chums and I used to run around in thunderstorms holding long lengths of copper pipe over our heads -- in retrospect, perhaps not the most evolutionarily sensible behavior, but it was our way of showing defiance. When not out getting soaked, I would sit inside and watch the lightning with the sort of air a cat has when it's sitting on the side of the window that the snarling dog is not.
I think that's why I found myself gravitating toward disaster recovery services. Sure, I like to help people and I do my best whenever I can, but I believe that I still feel a sort of deep-down satisfaction with helping someone back on their feet when Nature knocks them down. It's the smug little boy peering out the window at the lashing rain and saying, "Neener-neener! We're still here!"
I remember thinking something like the child's equivalent of, "Oh, yeah! Uh-huh! That all you got, Bee-yatch? Bring it on!"
Afterward there was no power and we had to get water from a tank truck parked at the end of the road for a few days. The rivers had all overflowed their banks and the front page of the Evening Bulletin had pictures of coffins floating in people's front yards from cemeteries that had been deluged, but we ourselves were fairly unscathed. My cousin's house had been flooded and everything within washed away. My mother told me, "Renee doesn't have any toys now," so I gathered up some of my Tonka trucks and wooden Little People to give to her. That really was the greatest impact on me personally, and it just added to my sense of, "Nature, yo' a pussy!"
Thereafter I tended to look at storms as something to be challenged. It was almost a personal thing: me against the lightning. My chums and I used to run around in thunderstorms holding long lengths of copper pipe over our heads -- in retrospect, perhaps not the most evolutionarily sensible behavior, but it was our way of showing defiance. When not out getting soaked, I would sit inside and watch the lightning with the sort of air a cat has when it's sitting on the side of the window that the snarling dog is not.
I think that's why I found myself gravitating toward disaster recovery services. Sure, I like to help people and I do my best whenever I can, but I believe that I still feel a sort of deep-down satisfaction with helping someone back on their feet when Nature knocks them down. It's the smug little boy peering out the window at the lashing rain and saying, "Neener-neener! We're still here!"