twister

i’ve always kinda had this thing for tornadoes. maybe it’s part of growing up in the midwest, where we actually have them. it seemed like at least once every summer we’d get the eagerly anticipated tornado warning (best if heard via radio). the wind would pick up (or die down and give us the eery calm) and it would rain or hail or just remain eerily still. and we would go to the basement.

my friend natalie and i went to the central library (in downtown honolulu) and we were browsing the new books. there was this particular book that was basically all tornado shots taken by storm chasers.  and it reminded me of all those storms i’d seen, running around outside, putting the bikes and four-wheelers and floaty noodles and cars away as my dad and brother turned off the irrigations. although the rain may or may not come, the lightening would.

i remember the way the wind whipped the dirt from the field up and around one summer where a stranger ended up in our basement because he didn’t want to be outside in it. or the time we could barely see the driveway, except that my dad and his employee were in his big white truck, out there on it, and were convinced that the only way they weren’t blowing away was that the employee was quite… well rounded.

within the first week of 7^th grade we were in the hallway, only this time it wasn’t a drill: it was real.  of course, we were no more serious than we were during the drills. we knelt there, math books (biggest book we had in our repertoires) over our heads, waiting for the ceilings to collapse. and we laughed, “we are going to die!” after a while, realizing that to kneel with a math textbook over your head for long periods of time is dreadfully uncomfortable, the teachers (who had been walking around monitoring and critiquing our kneeling- closer to the wall!; surely not letting any bare small of the back show- why isn’t your undershirt tucked in?) allowed us to sit, in a row, against the wall, in the hallways. it is actually one of my more fond memories of my scholastic experience.

today i was sitting , reading a book, at the kapolei transit center, awaiting the bus to target. and i looked up and noticed that there is something different in the sky. there was this odd brown streak. now, if i had been in china, there would be no reason for alarm, as the air quality is generally quite poor and the atmosphere is usually brown and/or gray. but this is hawaii, renown for it’s blue skies (and bluer water).  so the fact that there is brown in our air is unusual at best. then i really start to see it: a dust-devil. the biggest dust devil i have ever seen. it went all the way to the sky (most dust devils i’ve seen are rather short). but it was very faint, very loose.

we had a big black lab named harley. i remember seeing him get trapped in dust devils.  his tail would be twisted around and he’d get this look like, “what?!”

i love the dust devils: they remind me of tornadoes. i used to have (haven’t had in a long while) dreams about tornadoes. they usually hit our house; i would watch them approach. i was never really scared: just intrigued. i didn’t care that the tornado was going to rip our house and all our possession up, mix them around in the sky, and drop them back down a few miles away. all i wanted to do was see the tornado. don’t know why this was such a deep desire, but it was and is.

i suppose unless i move back to the midwest or to texas, my chances of seeing a tornado are rather slim.

but you can always dream.