30 Week Picture Challenge - Week 28

A picture of something you're afraid of

In reality, I'm scared of almost any type of storm for the fear of the kind of damage they can do.  But tornadoes probably scare me the most.

I grew up in a trailer park, and in the second grade they spent several lessons teaching about tornadoes and the destruction they can do.  So as a result, everytime it rained I took off in fear.  I had the TV on and looked for any kind of storm weather or the little flashing county map they display during the regualr shows.  If it was windy, I swore a tornado was coming.  I remember staying up late to watch the Weather Channel for hours on end to even see if there was a possibility a tornado could come.  I was paranoid, and living in the trailer didn't help.

There was only one time it started to rain and the news declared a severe thunderstorm warning. I was on alert but my mom convinced me to just go to sleep.  An hour or two later around midnight, I was waken up by loud banging noises and all the lights on in the house.  My mom and stepdad had the TV on, watching the weather.  My stepdad had the front door open, I guess trying to see the progress of the storm.  My mom looked at my sister and I and told us to grab some stuff and get in the car.  A tornado was getting close, and we had to leave.  We quickly got dressed and we took both cars up the road.  We drove in the direction away from the storm, only to face the tornado head on in the distance.  The roads were flooding as we tried to turn the car around to the oposite direction.  After what seemed like forever of driving, we arrived at a family member's house and we all huddled around the TV to watch the weather.  We seemed to have missed the storm, and things had started to calm down outside.  I finally fell asleep around 2 or 3am, still trying to watch the TV and the blinking warning that kept flashing.  My mom woke us up around 6am to drive back home.  Luckily, nothing was damaged at our trailer and it seemed the storm did miss us altogether.  I fell back asleep, only for my mom to wake me back up to go to school.  Ugh.

Since then I haven't had any other tornado encounters like that.  We've had the sirens go off in our town a few times, and everytime they do I grab the cat and settle into the hallway until the storm passes.  I try to get my husband to join me, but he's normally the one of the front porch trying to film the storm with his iPhone.