[M.M.X.I.V. 248] Get Ready To Rumble

Yesterday morning, there was a thunder- and rainstorm.  For some reason, my schema for these storms more frequently involves them at night.  But thunderstorms can happen at any time of the day!  I have some different stories of stormy weather, and so this will probably read like a freewrite, from one darned thing to another.

You may like listening to this song while reading this post (NOPE, it is NOT 2 Unlimited, despite the title of the post…)

When I was younger, thunderstorms always scared the bejeebies out of me.  There were a couple of times during the spring of my third-grade year that there would be a storm during the morning.  Although I never cowered in the corner of Mrs. Payne’s classroom, I probably was still out-of-sorts whenever the storm happened in class.  Honestly, however, my bigger fear was lightning striking a building that I was in.

That summer, I also had the fear of thunderstorms on the night before Mom’s high school reunion.  I have an essay from earlier on my blog, and there is something else from that experience that I wanted to show, much to the chagrin of my siblings: The Picture In The Room That Nobody Wanted To Sleep In.

The previous summer, we had visited Lincoln (we were living in Fort Dodge, Iowa at the time) and stayed at the Residence Inn at 68/O.  On the last full day of our vacation, we visited the state capitol building.  The day was dark, and our visit took us all the way up to the observation deck.  Thunderstorms began to brew, and it aggravated my fear of storms, particularly since the upper floor had a tall ceiling and a dome, so as to make the thunder really reverberate.  I don’t know if I was ever afraid of heights, but this could have sparked a fear (no pun intended).

A few stories of storms in fifth grade, with radically different reactions.  At the end of a week in Chicago for the A.A.F.P. convention, we were at Midway, waiting for our plane to return us to Omaha, and then Lincoln.  Our plane was delayed due to thunderstorms, but I think that my more salient emotion was hunger and/or annoyance rather than fear.  We got pizza, but frankly it tasted horrible.  If only I had known back then that I could have had Nuts on Clark Caramelcorn, but Mom and Dad probably would not have allowed us to splurge in that way at that time (I was 10, my sisters were 8, and my brother was 6 at the time).  Now?  Getting Nuts On Clark at the airport or Amtrak station is a tradition (excluding Passover or Thanksgiving)!

The fear re-materialized later in my fifth grade year.  It was the evening after the School Is Cool Jam at Devaney, and there was of course a thunderstorm.  My fear that I mentioned in the beginning of the post: fear of the house burning down after taking a hit, again was a phobia.

And in the morning on the Friday when Fun Night would have been in 1998 (I think it was May 15), there was a severe thunderstorm in the morning that included a tornado warning.  The tornado shelter area at Humann Elementary School was the locker rooms and/or bathrooms.  Although I was in the correct one (i.e. boy’s), there were a few of my classmates who ended up in the wrong one.  When the weather threatens, it doesn’t matter which bathroom you’re in as long as nobody has to go, and besides, safety is more important than propriety!

During my eighth-grade year, thunderstorms during the morning or day were salient a few times.  On the first day of school (August 22, 2000), Mom was under the weather, so that Dad took us to school, as Lincoln was under the weather.  The darkness of the thunderstorm made it not feel like the beginning of the day, let alone the first day of school.  I trudged through the day, but it went okay in the end.

Later in the year, I got to experience the eye of a storm.  The day started with a thunderstorm, but later in the day, the sky was clear as a bell, but enveloped in what seemed to be a stadium stand of clouds far on the horizon.  Mrs. Eihusen, my algebra teacher, mentioned that this was basically the eye of the storm for the day, as she had an interest in weather just as I did.  I stayed after school for the Knowledge Master Open, and afterward, there was indeed another thunderstorm.

As I mentioned in my post “Weather congruence,” all of these thunderstorms that I mentioned here need not be congruent with emotions of fear.  Sometimes, they just came up as salient memories, as foul weather often makes for a novel stimulus that allows me to further encode the day.

I think that’s enough rambling for now.  I need to head on to research!

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Today is the two-hundred and forty-eighth day of M.M.X.I.V.  That makes thirty-six weeks and three days.

Today is the fifty-third day of the Character Building Trial.  That makes seven weeks and four days.