may a house fall upon you

this is why i dislike spring. in general i love spring. and i love that as of yesterday it stays lighter out for a whole hour later now. i love that i'm seeing green and flowers, and most important i love that its finally warm. but i HATE tornados. they might be the single one thing that freaks the crap out of me. still. i remember when i was younger my grandma tried to explain to me what a tornado was, "its like a funnel that destroys things." somehow i couldn't get past destroyed and didn't fully understand what funnel meant so i envisioned this giant state puff marshmallow like man who walked around cities crushing houses. i'd have dreams about this tornado man. i don't think he ever talked though, just walked around stomping things.

when i finally realized what they were (thank you wizard of oz) i'd run for dear life down to the basement every time the airraid sirens went off screaming at my parents to follow suit. once my dad told me he heard them go off in the middle of the night but didn't want to wake my mom and i. i was pissed. even when they sirens weren't going off i'd stare intently at the corner of the TV where the networks had their crazy t-storm and tornado images along with the cities scrolling across to warn of the doom that was in store. maybe this is when i started biting my nails. in school we'd have tornado drills so we'd be prepared if one ever struck. sometimes we'd be fortunate enough to end up in an eclosed space. sometimes they'd tell us just to duck under our desks and put our coats on our heads. looking back i now realize that had a tornado actually come through our school those of us unlucky enough to be stuck under our desks probably stood little chance of survival.

i was always told that living so close to one of the great lakes (i grew up a mile from lake michigan) was good because the lake deterred tornados. i don't know how exactly but i'm pretty sure i thought the tornados were scared of water. maybe there's some truth to the above mentioned statment. all i know is that in my 24 years of existance i've only heard of 1 or 2 tornados passing through my hometown and only hitting a large state park destroying little of anyone's personal property. i've never seen one live and can't imagine what i'd do if i did.

i have nightmares about these things, frequently. in my dreams i'm always up high in a building and the sun is shining and out of now where the funnel cloud forms and seems to chase me. sometimes i have no choice but to jump out windows, other times i make it to safety only to come back and find that my house is the only one that has been destroyed. some people take pictures of these things. i stay inside and count down the minutes until the warning/watch is over.

maybe it was the wizard of oz that contributed to this fear. i never really like oz. the munchkins scared me. and if dorothy could wind up there simply by riding her house over the rainbow during a tornado whose to say i wouldn't end up there too.

i hate them. but i suppose i'd rather be in pittsburgh hating tornados than in miami hating hurricanes.