On Tornados

When I was seven, I slept through a tornado.  

That’s not as unusual as it sounds; my room was already in the basement, and the tornado didn’t come near our house, so my parents saw no reason to wake me.  Furthermore, the neighborhood’s tornado siren always sounds faint inside the house, and the storm itself didn’t make any more noise than a usual storm.  When I was told about the tornado the next morning, in my child-like way, I felt impressed by my “feat”--it seemed like a bragging point.  It doesn’t now, of course; sleeping during a tornado due to ignorance is not particularly laudable or even strange.  However, it’s an indication of my upbringing, which has led me to perceive tornados as an interesting natural phenomenon to be cautious of but not to fear.  

I’m well aware that many out-of-staters and Kansans alike find tornados terribly frightening.  I presumably acquired my ambivalence by observing and imitating the calm, prudent attitudes of my parents and teachers, who I’m sure first exposed me to tornados through tornado drills during preschool and elementary school.  Mom has also reported that I watched The Wizard of Oz repeatedly as a five-year-old.  Naturally, I now have no memory of doing so and no notion of what I thought of Hollywood’s tornado, nor its relation to me or my state.  Still,  these unremembered events surely affected the way I perceived that tornado in second grade.

    Tornado and fire drills were both mandatory at Pleasant Hill Elementary, and in later grades, I vaguely remember the space we used for the former--a long, featureless concrete room embedded in the hill for which our school was named.  We accessed it through the kindergarten or one of the first grade classrooms, which took up the outer part of the walk-out basement.  There we were made to sit in rows.  To the teachers standing over us as monitors, we must have looked like a bunch of funny turtles, bent over our crossed legs and covering our necks with our hands.

    The next tornado I recall struck while I was in summer daycare at Temple Beth Shalom (in cooperation with Topeka’s YWCA).  I might have been eight or nine.  We were herded toward the basement, and rumor quickly spread through the ranks that this was a real tornado rather than a drill.  The steps we descended paused at a landing before turning and continuing down, and I was one of several kids who paused to gape out the rain-speckled window there, hoping to see the tornado.  Our caretakers scolded us and made us continue downstairs.  I remember feeling irritated with them, certain that our watching wasn’t nearly as dangerous as they supposed.

In sixth grade, our class toured Washburn University.  The only part of that excursion I remember, however, was the room with aftermath photos of the devastating 1960s tornado that tore through Washburn U. and other parts of Topeka.  I remember feeling amazed by the amount of destruction, and I remember--piecemeal--our teacher’s recollection of hiding below their stairs during that event and how she felt when she and her family emerged.

That was also the year we frequently went outside to work on a compost project for our science lessons.  I recall sitting on the hill while this student or that dug through the compost and made observations.  One of those days, some of us were distracted, studying some thick clouds amassing, which we speculated were thunderheads.  Before we’d finished our work with the compost, we heard the tornado sirens begin, though the sun still shone in part of the sky.  We returned inside with a mixture of reluctance and excitement.  

The movie Twister came out in 1996, and my family watched it some time after it came out on video.  Unlike the main characters, I was a cautious child and fond of my comforts, not inclined to put myself in danger or get wet however interesting it might be to study something like a tornado, but I did once run into a downpour with wild delight to investigate a new stream that had appeared in our yard parallel to the creek a dozen yards away.  My dad was furious when I didn’t come back immediately when he called.  Even though there wasn’t a tornado, lightning was another very real danger which may have passed through the water to me or may have struck one of the giant cottonwoods by our creek and sheared off a huge branch above my head, which it has done in the past (sheared off a branch, that is--not over my head).

When the tornado sirens sound now when I’m at home, I unplug my laptop in case of a lightning strike and spend a few moments examining the sky from the screen door.  Although our basement is a creepy, spider-filled place where I don’t like to linger doing laundry too long, eventually, I’ll grab the flashlight and a book, and go sit on the basement steps (it’s not possible to sit under them, and there’s no way I’m venturing into the poorly-lit, unclean other half of the basement where I might hide in what was to be a closet before mold made the basement uninhabitable).  When multiple people are present, we may sit on top of the dryer or on a folding chair brought down from the kitchen.  I may go up now and then to watch the rain or hail and to check for twisting clouds.  When Joel’s present, he watches the radar for us; when he’s not, I simply take my ease as best I can and wait for the sirens to stop, indicating it’s safe to ascend to ground level.
I wouldn’t say I have a cavalier attitude about tornados; I’m well aware of their dangers--Topeka’s 1960s tornado might have been before my lifetime, but Greensburg’s certainly isn’t.  Whether foolish or not, I don’t mind my little risky glimpses of nature’s power, knowing it is just a fraction of the power its Creator has at His disposal.  It awes and thrills me--though like anyone, I’d prefer the tornados chew up unused land instead of homes and crops and lives, but despite that, I’d rather live in unpredictable tornado country than in hurricane country, where those storms’ destruction and flooding are often more wide-spread than that left behind by our smaller, more powerful twisters.  I pray I’ll never have reason to regret this preference.