paranoia

call it paranoia call it old age, call it whatever you want but i half expect for there to be tornadoes here tonight.

i know. ridiculous. all the more so because i’ve spent a good part of my life in the fringes of tornado alley. i’m accustomed to the warning system that takes up residency in the corner of my television screen when i’m in texas. and on the occasion when i was in the right place at the right time, i’ve even heard a tornado siren or two.

i’m so used to them that i made fun a friend who visited me years ago because she wanted to hunker down in the bathtub with some water and a mattress until the “warning” passed. i laughed and pointed out that she would be in there for a few months.

of course post hurricane katrina i have a bit less cheeky retort and more faith that mother nature can get you if she wants to. so when the weather alert kept flashing across the bottom of the tv screen tonight i took notice that we are under a tornado warning.

its a big deal to me now.

now that i’m in a place that i think of more as hurricane central than tornado. now that i’ve seen what nature’s wrath can do…

so i sit in my bed at a ridiculous hour to be awake and hear rumbling. being new orleans i wasn’t sure if it was something seedy or thunder…but meteorologists and advancing storms clarified my suspicions even as i began writing this. so i hunker down waiting…half chiding myself for ridiculousness and half remembering i did the same thing before katrina…

Tags: katrina, me-ness, neworleans