Take Your Choice

Sometimes when I tell someone that I lived in Southern California for 20 years, he asks me if I was afraid of earthquakes. Of course I was afraid of earthquakes and "enjoyed" two pretty large ones in the Los Angeles area between 1987 and 2006. Now that I've been in Minnesota for over a year, my question to a local would be to ask if he is afraid of tornadoes, to which I'm sure to get an affirmative. It seems, then, that wherever one lives, he has to contend with either floods, fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, or something else that tears hell out of things.

As I write this post, a tornado warning is just about to expire for the area in which I live. I grew up in the South, an area accustomed to tornadoes, and I remember hunching down in some part of the house believed to be safe as a tornado roared through my part of Dixie. I was a few minutes ago reminded of all these weather disturbances, as I just returned from a trip to Cub Foods, our large grocery retailer, just after someone in the store reported a tornado warning. So I finished my checkout, headed for the car, and came home with large splats of water hitting my windshield. I saw, too, a not-fully-formed funnel, and darkness all around.

As I pulled into our parking area, I heard a loud, shrill siren, a public "announcement" given when a tornado warning has actually been issued, ie.,a tornado has actually been spotted touching down in the area. It would be nice if there were an earthquake warning! In any case, the people here are practiced in dealing with storms, and this siren indicates that they should immediately go to the safest place possible, a central room or a basement.

Once I came into the condo, the television meteorologist said that a tornado had actually touched down near U. S. 494 and France Avenue, the area I had glanced at just a few minutes before. There was no feeling of fear during any of this, certainly not the fear I felt at being nearly thrust out of bed during the large earthquake that hit Los Angeles County in early 1994. I must admit that I was scared silly that early January morning. My bookshelves were emptied by the movement of the earth, and a small glass object d'art broke. I was very lucky because the building, built back in the 50s, suffered very little damage.

There are continuous reports of funnel clouds as I sit here and write, all the while listening to our intrepid weather man (no, that's not sexist; he is a man). Whew! Now I hear that the tornado warnings for my county have been cancelled. I probably won't relax too much, as it's still quite dark out. And this is a huge storm system, complete with high winds and all. Anyway, it's good we don't overthink the natural events that can come suddenly, engulf us, maybe harm us, then leave most of us unscathed and relieved, and saying thanks to whatever we say thanks to -- if we do.

I'm glad for that part of the brain that keeps the horrible at bay, lets us "forget" the last time we hurt so much, or were so afraid. Otherwise, we'd likely not be able to go about our day-to-day tasks with optimism, hope, and all those other wonderful abstracts that give life some of its flavor. And we probably wouldn't be able to live with one another more than a day or two.