I am going to tell you a little secret about me. I am deathly afraid of thunderstorms. I have been since I was a wee lass. Because let me tell you, you have never truly experienced the horror of a big thunderstorm until you have done so in a trailer.
There was an entire summer growing up that ruined me from ever enjoying a storm, as I know some people do; and that I cannot fathom. It was a drought summer and I am not kidding when I say it stormed every day. Every. Day. The days were filled of hellish hot and the afternoons/evening with fearing for my life during the storms.
A thunderstorm in a trailer is way more of an experience than virtual reality. When you're in a nice house sure it's loud and you can hear the rain BUT you house isn't swaying. In a trailer, you know only hear the power of a storm, you feel it.
My mom and I would sit together, huddle up, crying and praying during many a storm. I cried A LOT that summer thinking my mom and I were going to die. That we two and the trailer were going up in the air Oz style.
It's not something I like to remember and I certainly feel blessed that I own a brick house. However the past few days have brought some big storms to Ohio and I find myself think about how a trailer sways in the wind like a boat does on the sea during a storm.
This is also the particular summer that I became addicted to The Weather Channel. I would watch and watch just waiting for a storm to be approaching so I could freak the fuck out even more. It's a wonder I didn't give myself an ulcer. (How did we have the weather channel? My sister Stephanie lived in our neighborhood during this summer, in a trailer, BUT with cable. Score.) (Another note, she also had found this grey kitten and fed it butter. It's belly dragged on the floor when it walked. That cat was cute as shit.)
There are three things key things that happened this summer (not to mention the hundred storms that went with it) that sealed the deal for me when it comes to thunderstorms=death:
1. During one storm the tornado sirens went off. My mom and I had to go and take cover in a ditch. Try and beat that on the I think I am going to die scale meter.
2. During another storm some of our neighbor friends, my mom, and I went to someone's house with a basement. I saw a tree get uprooted and land on a house and I saw more trees than I ever care to see again that were bent sideways from the wind. It looked like Armageddon to a young kid.
3. During yet another storm, my mom and I were with her friend Judy. We were on a country road and a storm just came out of nowhere. I shit you not, a TORNADO was heading towards us, picked UP the car OFF THE GROUND, and miraculously sat it down so we could pull into a driveway, beat on their door, and scramble inside. The tornado was coming RIGHT TOWARDS the house and they were all watching it out the patio door as they had no basement; I was in the bathroom. 100 feet before it came it the house, it went back into the sky. Shit your pants? So did I.
Coming from a place where I KNOW a storm can kill you, I don't understand why people do not take them into account. Most of the time people treat storms as if they are no big deal, which yes, they often tend to be. But that one time that it IS a big deal...
I am the person that wants to take cover when there is a thunderstorm warning because I don't like to mess around with storms. I think that is why too many people die from storms, they don't take them seriously. I would just like to make PA:
If it is storming do not go outside. Do not go to the store or another destination. Do not call places and see if they are open. Stay home. Take cover. Be safe.
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