Twist and Shout

I dedicate this photo of a cardinal in our back yard to MJagger, who seems to find it quite humorous that the wife and I are bird watchers.

This week featured something I NEVER thought I'd see in the month of January in Northern Illinois....

...oh, it was weird enough to see worms on the sidewalk and to enjoy 64 degree temps...

...it was quite unexpected to see a slug hanging from Freckles' belly (gained from walking outside along the worms)...

but, hearing of a locally-spotted tornado in January? Never.

A tornado! Seriously. I can't wrap my head around this.

Those of you living other than in winter wonderlands might not find a tornado in January weird. Well, I'm telling you it's REALLY weird in Northern Illinois. It should be snowy and cold and miserable. It should like the photo above--snowy and cold.

I'm at work and it IS decidely winter and it is January. There are no windows where I work, so I have to assume it is still cold and gloomy and wintery outside. A co-worker runs through the basement, babbling about the weather. I wasn't sure I was hearing things correctly, as I was sure the a co-worker said there was a tornado warning and that a tornado was spotted in the county......

The FIRST thing I do? Run outside to look. I can't take this person at face value.

Yup, it's weird and calm and green and humid and warm and....wait a minute, this can't be January. A bunch of us are standing out there, looking at the sky. It's confusing--discombobulating. Someone announces the tornado was seen in the vicinity of my house.....

The second thing I do? I grab a cell phone and call the wife at home--not to warn her to get in the basement but rather to.....

"GET THE CAMERA!"

She does not do this.

Instead, she quotes the Weather Channel warnings and announces that she can hear the tornado warning alarm is going off. She sternly alerts me that she and the dogs are safely placed on the lower level.

My requests for her to go outside with the camera remain unanswered.

This is strange stuff. I head back inside and cackle with co-workers about the tornado. It won't be long before we learn the tornado has done major damage to a beloved apple orchard. We hear that the twister zipped its way east-north-east and headed toward the wife's favorite mall, an hour's drive away.

Thankfully, no one was killed and we can thus make fun of the tornado going to the mall.



After the winter twister, we head to the wife's volleyball game. The tornado talk is still fresh. As we yip with friends, I am totally taken aback when a friend--Bejeweled Cleveland--someone I have known since 1986--announces she was IN the 1967 Belvidere tornado.

My jaw drops. I've known her all this time and I had no idea.

April 21, 1967. 3:50 PM. School was being let out for the day.

Twenty four deaths; over 400 people injured.  

It's not a pretty story.  

I'm hear to tell you it is an entirely different thing to hear the story from a friend who is an actual survivor-- someone you know who was on a school bus, being tossed around, bus rolling and rolling, literally off the ground, seeing a plank of wood speared right into another student's leg, not being able to find her parents for four hours after the twister demolished the school, seeing dead children.

Bejeweled's voice does not betray her and she shows no emotion...but, it's there.

There is no way a trauma of this magnitude doesn't change you. The carnage depicted in photos from the event is awful--to hear the actual story from someone you know who was at that event is unnerving and chilling.

I decide right then and there that going outside to get a photo of a tornado is not such a good idea.
 
I have always been "drawn" to tornados. Once, when I was locked in the bathroom (or, so I thought--I probably wasn't locked in the bathroom but I was probably too hyped up to turn the doornob) at my grandparents' for my sixth birthday, a funnel cloud (or what my creative imagination thought was a funnel cloud) swirled by the party. (It's the same year I got my first alarm clock and this awesome alphabet book. But, I digress.) Tornados seemed glamorous. Fun. Amazing. I always wanted to see one, to take a photo of one.

From Bejeweled's account, I know I am very wrong in my romanticism of such a violent form of nature. Nope, I'm not going outside to take photos. I'm going to take cover. 

No time for worms or slugs or photos. Just go to the basement and call it a day.

Who says the Addiverse isn't a safe place to be?