[Follow these links to catch up with the #10 stupid thing, #9 stupid thing, #8 stupid thing, #7 stupid thing, #6 stupid thing, #5 stupid thing, #4 stupid thing, and #3 stupid thing I survived growing up in Texas.] There is nowhere to go but down from here. I’ve had a fair share of inward debate over these last couple of months as to which of my stupid deeds to rank at the bottom. These last two are competitively stupid, so after flipping a coin, here we go.
Tornados are simply awesome, are they not? Menacing vortexes of destruction that appear, terrorize, and disappear like the finger of a vengeful god. The angry wind…accompanied occasionally by that eery silence. Beating rain. Hail stones capable of punching holes through walls and stripping trees of their branches. The raw power is breathtaking to say the least. I find these storms to be truly awe inspiring. I always have.
The ranch upon which I spent much of my adolescence had (and still has) an old ranch house built upon a nob with an expansive view. On good days, the view includes the entire Ft. Worth skyline. I spent many afternoon-watermelon-gorgings on the front porch of that ranch house. I also spent a handful of tornado watching sessions. On one particularly stormy afternoon, I observed five separate funnel clouds…at once. It was amazing. Tornados formed almost faster than I could count them. Not all of them touched down, and I can only hope no one experienced their destructive power firsthand. On that occasion, none of them came within a mile of my viewing porch (which seemed like a totally reasonable distance at the time), thus not triggering my self-preservation impulse.
At the time, a tornado didn’t feel particularly dangerous unless it was within a few hundred yards. The two I remember the most managed to come a good bit closer than that. Both found me while driving home, at night. That’s the thing about darkness; It’s hard to see stuff in it, especially dark funnel clouds.
I remember seeing the first of the two in the rearview mirror of my 1982 Volvo 240 DL as I topped and descended the railroad crossing in the middle of my hometown. It seemed like it was right on top of me. Like it had formed directly overhead and slowly stalked me. I’m not sure how I hadn’t seen it when turning onto main street…unless it literally hadn’t been there.
At that moment, my instinct might not have been the correct instinct, as far as the textbook on not dying in a tornado is concerned. But in this particular instance, stomping on the accelerator (as much as one can stomp on the accelerator of a Volvo) and getting the hell out of there, worked. When a tornado appears to be directly overhead, the odds of picking a path different from the tornado’s path goes up. In this case, I chose to head the opposite direction of the trailer park. Unfortunately for the trailer park, I chose correctly.
My second close call, the one that sticks with me the most, caught me attempting to navigate my way home from a friend’s house in Willow Park after a late night of studying calculous. This time, there had been a tornado warning. Multiple funnel clouds had been spotted, but I needed to get home. It was a school night. Rather than getting caught in a gnarly mess on the interstate, I opted for the access road knowing it allowed greater opportunities for parking and laying in the ditch. The plan was to make it to Hudson Oaks where I could pass underneath the interstate and use the backroad to go home.
Before reaching the Hudson Oaks exit, golf-ball-sized hail forced me to seek shelter. The nearest option to escape the violence of the storm just so happened to be straight out of every b-horror film ever made—a lonely, abandoned gas station. In the nick of time, I rolled under the creaking, metal overhang of what used to be a single stall service station.
Lightning spiderwebbed the night sky. The sound of hail against the metal roof of the station grew so deafening I couldn’t hear the carnage of the funnel cloud when it struck down in the pasture behind the station. Something about the air pressure flipped a switch inside me. Or maybe it was the fact the rain was no longer falling downward, but sideways.
My chosen spot for safety against the storm no longer felt safe. The hail let up enough to no longer threaten to shatter my windshield. I rolled forward to see around the edge of the building, and there it was. This tornado was definitely violating my personal need-for-survival space. While I was parked beside a structure (typically a good thing), this structure felt anything but “sturdy.” With the Hudson Oaks interstate underpass only another couple hundred yards away, I made the decision to bolt for it. A glance in my rearview mirror revealed that decision to be the correct one even before I reached the underpass.
The funnel cloud ripped directly through the abandoned station in an impressive display of sparks, mangled metal, and shattered tree branches. I skidded to a stop beneath the interstate and shut off my car.
I was late getting home that night. Real late. And while I would love to say I took a more cautious approach to extreme weather after that night…well, my mother taught me that sometimes it’s better to say nothing at all.
At the Desk This Week
Making more good progress on season three of The Green Ones. I’m down to the last two scenes. This next one is gonna be a bit meta as I help another of my main characters connect with their doppelgänger from across the multiverse. It’s a fun challenge to describe something that goes beyond human experience (at least to date). Connecting with another consciousness…that is also you, but not you, is a trippy thing to think about, to say the least. Season three has been nothing if not trippy. I knew from the start that I was going to take my main protag into and out of her own mind in multiple crazy ways. It’s part of the fun of developing a world with telekinesis and telepathy to be sure.
If You Wish to Start Reading The Green Ones…
[Click here to start at the beginning.]
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