Boy, there sure has been some bad weather in the state lately!
Everybody feels something when that thunder and lightning start … for me, it means it’s a great day to stay in bed. Or at least stay home in warm-ups and fuzzy slippers. Of course, on those absolutely beautiful, cloudless, low humidity, seventy-degree days, it’s hard to go to work, too, so I guess if it was up to the weather, I’d never work.
For my daughter, it means fear. Ever since she was itty bitty, if it thundered during the night, it was a matter of nanoseconds before she was in bed with us.
For my son, it’s exciting. His eyes light up and he wants to go outside and play in it, lightning and all. Ask him to walk home from school in the rain, though, and he’ll cry “child abuse.”
Tornadoes are a different deal. They’re just plain scary. We all have one story or another about close calls with tornadoes, like trampolines on our roofs or seeing one in the distance.
But my favorite story about a tornado comes from a friend of mine named Bill. Bill and his wife were driving from Florida to Oregon and were somewhere in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. They could see an enormous bank of black clouds in the distance, and as they got closer, it took on an ominous green hue. They really didn’t want to stop, but when they heard tornado warnings on the radio, they pulled into a little motel that had seen better days.
He was in the restroom, she was laying on the bed … when he heard it. The freight train sound. They say when a tornado is heading for you it sounds just like a train is coming.
He yelled, “It’s coming! Omigosh, it’s coming!”
They both dove into the bathtub, but were scared to death because it was very close to a window. But there was nowhere else that looked any safer, so there they waited, huddled with their arms around each other, for the tornado to hit. They prayed. They said “I love you.”
The noise got louder and louder, then became a loud steady rhythm. Bill looked up at the window, expecting to see trees and other debris flying by.
Imagine his surprise when what he saw was a freight train roaring by. Right outside the bathroom window. No, not a tornado, but yes, a real train.
Well, they didn’t get much sleep, because apparently there are a lot of trains that go through New Mexico in the middle of the night. They never saw a tornado, but they sure have a good story.
