Over the summer, I got caught in the worst rain storm of my life. Any worse and I honestly believe it could have been the last rain storm of my life. I mentioned my trip from Virginia to Maine in passing once before, saying that it was “a twelve-hour trek through flash-floods and fast moving water, past sunken cars and closed roads that will forever rank among the scariest days of my life.” Today I mention it in passing because last night I drove through one mess of a storm.
Yesterday evening I had a meeting for work, so after my work day was over, I returned to the Lake Where I Eat Lunch Often for the down time. That’s when the rains began. I first sought shelter in my car, but quickly decided to spend the time at the library rather than cooped up in my car. That’s when the tornados started. Everyone was rushed to the basement or the back issues of the periodicals room on the main floor. (I’ve told folks I went to the basement, but really I was reading the August issue of Yoga magazine, which is alphabetically the last magazine the library carries. It passed the time nicely.)
A couple hours later I walked through the light rain of the late night more than ready to be home. That’s when the rain really began. I didn’t think too much of it until I saw multiple cars in the median and on the shoulder, and the two lane parkway had drivers not in single file but hugging the center line on either side, reduced to speeds of twenty miles an hour. It was terrible.
I made it home in one piece, thinking that I had just driven through the worst storm I have ever experienced, but then, I remembered that horrendous drive to Maine over the summer. I quickly tried to redefine this latest drive home and failed. At home, I said hello to my wife and made no mention of the weather.
This should not be a tricky situation. I should simply be referring to all such storms as “easily one of the worst” but that’s never the case. At the time, when you are in the moment and you are squinting through rain drops for glimpses of the lines on the road that you are hoping and praying you are staying between, it is scary. And it does seem like the worst storm ever. Worst. Ever!
And maybe that’s okay. Maybe all things lose the emotion behind them as time passes on, leaving just a memory and recognition of the emotion. The result being that I can look back on the scariest drive of my life the same way that I would look back on my college graduation, or some similar good event. It’s probably some survival technique that we have developed through eons of evolution.
So… to help my future self out, here is a list of the top five worst storms that I’ve driven through.
1.Trip to Maine through flash floods in 2011
2.Commute home in the snow in winter 2011 that left lots of people stranded, but not me.
3.Commute home after Board Hearing, October 13, 2011
4.Trip to Harrisonburg with the double-rainbow all-the-way, June of 2011
5.Some Future Storm, probably in 2011
I don’t remember any particular bad driving in storm experiences before last year, just bad driving, but I am beginning to suspect that a similar list a year from now might look completely different.
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