Eric told me when I got home that our area had experienced some variance in temperature that day; specifically, there was a drop of about twenty degrees within two hours. At first, I simply looked at him blankly, forgetting where we lived. Then I remembered; we're in the Midwest now. Temperature drops like that mean

Of course, being the good little East Coast Natives that we are, we promptly decided to ignore the warning that was in effect and go out to dinner. On the way there, the weather began to take a turn for the worse.

"You want to turn around and go home, honey?"
"No, I want to get there and get inside."

By the time we reached the restaurant, rain was falling hard and the sky in one direction was an ominous black. Lightning was crackling all over the place, jumping from cloud to cloud before striking pointy fingers down toward the earth. Before we left the car, the Emergency Broadcast Signal came blaring out of our speakers. We greeted the restaurant hostess with "By the wall, away from the windows" as our answer to "Smoking or non?" I decided that wings would serve the role of tornado food quite nicely.

Random mutterings about the weather filled the room, but most people seemed to be blissfully unaware of the fact that, at that moment, funnel clouds had been sighted in a neighboring town and were moving in our direction. Our waitress was quite startled by the news. "Oh, Lord, I hate tornados," she said with an ashen look. "I'm going to be in the beer cooler if they hit; that way, I can at least be drunk." With the new knowledge that the staff of Ralphie's had no Comprehensive Tornado Plan in effect, Eric went to scout us out a place in the restaurant where we would be relatively safe from falling debris.

A tornado? That's a little different. I've never been through one of these. We never had them back in Maryland or West Virginia. (Actually, a small tornado hit my hometown several years ago, freaking everybody out because "tornadoes never come here!") Blizzards, floods, and droughts comprise the natural disasters that occur in the areas in which I was raised. When I moved up here, I had an inkling of an idea that the weather would worsen, but I never really thought seriously about it.

Last summer was my first experience with tornadoes. Luckily, I managed to avoid them entirely through sheer luck. Once when we were in Toledo proper for the evening, a tornado hit our suburb of Bowling Green. When we were back home in Bowling Green, tornadoes struck Toledo proper. I entertained images of a new marketing ploy: "Hire Carrie to stand nearby! Tornadoes only go where she isn't!"

I worked in the university computer labs that summer, and we were all familiarized with the Tornado Plan. Thankfully, I never had to put the Plan to use, but had a tornado hit, I was to round up all the students and lead them to one of the building's inner hallways, where I would wait with a radio for the "all-clear" signal. Our radio never worked, which made me doubly grateful that the tornadoes were avoiding my presence. I also knew that there was no way in Heaven or earth that I was going to be able to "keep calm and collected," let alone "maintain control over the students."

"Don't go outside, everybody, 'cause there's a tornado out there!"

The little girl at the table next to us kept chirping this over and over. Her eyes were glassy with fright; her parents were oblivious to her fear. Finally, when her cries reached an unbearable level of shrillness, her mother turned and faced her from across the table. "Do you want to sit next to me?" When the child nodded wildly, the mother let her climb over to her.

I whispered to Eric, "This child is probably going to have nightmares for weeks. If we're ever in this situation, one of us has to remember to take the kid back to the game room and distract her, got it?" He agreed.

We sat there in relative silence, listening to the winds howl. The TV went back to airing some sitcom, though the canned laughter seemed to echo hollow through our ears. Occasionally the newscaster would reappear to chide us for watching television when we should be cowering in abject terror behind the washing machine. One family decided to make a break for home, almost sending the little girl into a fit of hysteria: "Don't go outside, guys, don't go outside!"

In sharp contrast, the baby sister of the little girl seemed happier than humanly possible. She giggled, grinned, and waved her chubby legs in the air. Waitress, perhaps in an effort to take their own minds off the screaming gale, began to pass her around the restaurant, delighting in her baby sighs. It provided just the right contrast to complete the surrealism of the moment - a lilting melody over a pounding, dissonant accompaniment.

Four funnels touched down (and me without an end-zone dance prepared!) in our county alone. Each one of them hit in a field; not a single person was killed, though a few barns were struck by lightning and caught fire. I saw plenty of debris scattered on the roads and sidewalks, but the town is intact.

I wonder if the little girl was able to sleep last night. Surprisingly, I myself slept like a babe. I guess my childhood fear of lightning has been well and truly vanquished.

Now to work on my newly developed fear of the wind.