Stormy Weather!!!!

I love rainy, snowy and stormy weather. Something about precipitation makes me very happy. When I was really little, I would dread looking out the window to see clouds in the sky, probably due to the fact that my parents had bad weather rules. If we were watching TV or on the phone when thunder rumbles far away in the distance, our house became a government facility on lock down. Off went the TV, the phone goes back on the hook and most of the nights in the house go off. The four of us were stuck in the living room staring at each other listening to KSJ or WXBM for weather reports. If one of us happened to move, my dad would instill the fear of lightning in us, "Goddamnit, I told you before you can't go in the bathroom during storms!" Watching TV or trying to talk on the phone usually entailed a false recollection of how my grandmother became deaf in one ear from being struck by lightning. I eventually found that her deafness was nothing to do with any kind of storm, she had a severe case of otitis media that remained untreated until the fluid burst her eardrum.

During a summer that I'd spent at my grandmother's house, my cousins and I used the daily afternoon thundershowers as a good reason to play spoons, Wheel or Fortune or whatever games were in my grandmother's house at the time. The lights were usually off, candles lit and each of us with a mason jar full of sweet tea.

Over the past few years, I developed my dad's storm habits...Mainly after Terry and I were watching TV in a thunderstorm in Smyrna, Georgia. Terry asked "What if?" and I answered "It wouldn't hit the TV, it would be the cable box and then fry the TV and anything else connected to it...Ten seconds later my words became prophecy or a theory come true. Lightning popped through the window next to the chair I was sitting in, snapped the cable box and killed our cable box, brand new TV and Playstation 2. Since then, I've been much more cautious, I have to fight with Terry to get him to turn off his computer or the television...some people never learn I guess.

My ideal perfect day would actually be in the 60's, rainy, lightning in the distance, windows cracked enough not to let the rain in, lights out, candles lit, a small radio on while reading a book or doing a word search to entertain me...Yep, pretty much the scenario of a 70 year old man.