The Glory of a Good Storm

It's Monday night. I should be writing an 8-10 page reflection paper on my practicum experience. Or shopping for new car insurance. Or possibly cleaning my room. But instead here I sit, typing a blog which may or may not be read by...well, anyone. Except Brooke. Brooke will definitely read it. She's stuck in Mozambique and is desperate for comm of any sort, so she's almost certainly my most faithful reader. Perhaps there are more of you. It's hard to know, though, in this oh-so-anonymous virtual world of blogging.

My aforementioned friend would like it to be known that it was she who introduced me to Totino's Party Pizzas (see my profile on the right side of the blog). This was indeed a significant turning point in my life. I will forever be indebted to Brooke for this good deed.

In other news I think I might be allergic to the chair I have to sit in on Mondays at my summer job. I only sit in that chair on Mondays because that's the day I'm filling in for the secretary. And I seem to get headaches a lot on Mondays. Weird, huh?

It's been swelteringly humid in the greater Chicago area lately, and today we've had scattered thunderstorms. Now I will be the first to admit that I'm pretty hard on the suburbs, and here's an excellent example of why that is: the suburbs don't even know how to do a good storm! When you live in the sticks, you see a storm coming from miles away. You alert the family, close all the western- and southern-facing windows, perhaps stop in the kitchen for a snack, and still have plenty of time to head out to the porch to watch the show. The cool breeze brushes your hair back, cooling your summer-heated body as you point at the dark, ominous thunderhead approaching.

In the country, a storm is like a story- it has a beginning, and middle, and an end. You watch it approach with anticipation, like the slow and almost giddy trip to the top of a roller coaster's first drop. You relish the glory of it as it rushes past you, the lightning flashing close enough to give you goosebumps; the thunder making you jump in spite of yourself. You stay just close enough to the edge of the awning to get sprinkled on without getting soaked. Then you turn to watch it pass by, on its way to refresh the next county with its energy and its rain.

In the suburbs you get none of this. You get an advance thunderclap or two, and then you get the rain. If it's a really good storm, maybe there's some lightning. But the drama of the whole thing is missing. It's just...limp. Anticlimactic. Disappointing.

Hmm, well that was just depressing. Sorry, kids. I hope that you get to enjoy a robust, climactic storm sometime soon- a storm the way God intended storms to be- excitement and all.