Growing up in Southeast Iowa gave me plenty of opportunities to be in some pretty powerful storms. In Spring and most of Summer there is an almost constant stream of some kind of weather alert going across the screen. You tend to not even think twice when you see a Tornado watch. Tornado warning...no big deal. Unless, of course, there is an actual tornado goin' on outside your window. Then, that is a big deal.
I remember this one time (...at bandcamp..just kidding) I was in Burlington with my mom and grandfather. I think I was maybe 10, or some age where I felt small in the back seat of a car. Anyway, a big storm had blown in very quickly. It started with the big, gray billowy clouds that seem to go up for miles. The sky was half serene evening blue, and the other half seemed paused in mid-churn.
Everything got really dark, the kind of darkness that is usually only reserved for eclipses, and the pre-cursor to kick-ass storms. On the radio, the announcer said a tornado was forming just south of Burlington, Iowa, on Highway 61. That was exactly where we were. My mom got all excited, she has always loved thunderstorms. She said she could see it, and grandpa piped up and said he could see it, too.
I looked up in the sky and there was a bluish outline of an almost perfect square in the gray clouds. It was just a random design made by some of the clouds breaking up and showing the evening sky behind it. I, however, thought this was where the tornado was going drop down. I imagined that there must be a giant trapdoor in the sky, and it would plop open and a tornado, that had been prancing angrily on the tops of the clouds, would hop down to do a little damage.
I was a pretty imaginative little guy. I think I lived inside my head quite a bit. Hell, I also believed, for a short time, that the airport beacon was this really tall guy who was out at night looking for his hunting dog. Seriously, I believed this for awhile.
Oh, and those big piles of dirt that are around rock quarries. Yeah, well, I thought those were giant ant hills.
One final thing about storms, after that non-sequitur above...When we were kids, my sisters and I, would sit on our big brown front porch and watch the storms come in. We loved to watch the lightning and count down to the thunder. We were so completely entertained by the experience. Sometimes, if it was a very spectacular display of light and booming sound, we would actually applaud the skies.
We talked about the possibility of God and the Angels bowling. At the time, I was reading a lot of mythology, so I usually pictured a very Greek "God" with an ivy wreath on his head wearing a white robe, throwing the ball down the lane. It's not as much fun now, leaning towards a more Eastern approach to God, I imagine no-thing throwing a ball down the lane. Not quite as romantic.
We would also scream at the sky, "Grind Thor!"
Still, to this day, I am not quite sure what this means, but we believed by yelling it we would anger Thor, the god of thunder, and in turn he would throw lightning bolts at us. When the sky actually did light up with lightning after we yelled our little magic phrase, we would freak out like only kids can do and get really giddy with nervous laughter.
I think those were some of the best times of my life. The times when we have such an amazing innocent awe of life. We challenge it playfully, and respect it completely, not even knowing it.
That is an example of what I mean when I say, "I miss being a kid." It does feel really good to think about innocent times.
My chest is warm.
Peace.
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