Tuesday, February 10, 2009

When the sirens go off, it's time to go outside and stare at the sky.

Oklahoma had it's first round of tornadoes for the year today. This is very early. Gaby, my partner, says he's wondering if he'll be able to live in Oklahoma living with this kind of stress. They don't have tornadoes in Chihuahua, and every storm frightens him. They frighten his mother, too, and when she hears about today, she'll be calling in a panic.

When we need a storm shelter, we go to my parents house. On the way, I was amused and Gaby was astonished by the number of people standing outside staring at the sky. When he questioned me about it, I told him, "They're from Oklahoma. That's what we do."

My parents' neighbor has a teenage son who has got to be one of the dumbest kids in town. (One time he dragged his trampoline to the driveway in front of the garage door so that he could jump on it from the roof.) This afternoon he got up on the roof during the thunderstorm to see if he could see the tornado five miles northwest of us. His neighbor saw him and asked how he got up there, and would he be able to get down? I yelled over that one good lightning strike, and he would slide right off. We did not see whether he got down before it started hailing.

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