Lilapsophobia

Note: I inadvertantly posted this to my hobby blog, Inkgenious,  when I meant to post it here. (Darn that Windows Live Writer!) Anyway, for those of you who've already seen it, sorry for the double post. I believe there are a few people who only check this blog though so that's why I'm posting again.

Few sounds strike fear into my heart like that of the tornado siren sounding during a bout of severe weather. There aren't a whole lot of things that I am afraid of. I mean, yes, there is a small list of things that cause me anxiety, but nothing to rival Monk's phobias. One thing that I am terrified of however is tornadoes. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's truly a phobia, but I would go so far as to sit in the closet in Seth's room (the most interior room of our house) during the half hour Tornado Warning yesterday with Nate and Daniel and the radio tuned into a local weather station for updates. The closet has been cleaned out and serves as our family's severe weather shelter. I had a battery-powered radio, a flashlight and some pillows and I plan to put our 72 hour kits in there when they are updated. There is definitely comfort in feeling prepared and I will feel better when everything is in place. As the scripture says "if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear"!

I am in the process of preparation--the what-to-do-in-case-of- emergency--but since we have been having quite a bit of  nasty weather lately (not unusual for Alabama at this time of year) I have been thinking about not only the "what" but the "why."  Why do I have this fear? Have I seen too many documentaries about Xenia, OH  and the Super Outbreak of 1974?  Have I seen one too many natural disaster movies, or is it because I have been too close for my personal comfort to such occurrences on occasion?

The last couple of days my mind keeps going back to 3rd or 4th grade. I remember one stormy day with clarity.  There was no power in the school. All the children had to go into the halls and wait. I think we were there for around 2 or 3 hours alternating between the position where you crouch with your hands clasped over your neck and just sitting cross-legged on the floor. The teachers took turns pacing and keeping order and occasionally peeking out the double doors by the front of the school to report on what was going on outside. A tornado was reported to have hit a power station that was adjacent to the school while I was there in the hallway with the other students. I also vividly remember making it home safely at the end of that nightmarish day and my dad calling us out to the front porch and showing us a funnel cloud in the sky. It was quite far off and was moving in the opposite direction from us but it was still terrifying to me.

There have been a couple of other times when I have been in  severe weather and had to take shelter--once in the basement of our home in Indiana during a really bad windstorm and a couple of times here since we moved back. Personal experiences aside, there are always plenty of scary weather stories to feed my over-active imagination as well. That freak tornado in Salt Lake City in 1999 comes to mind.

Of course the protagonist in the book (Hatchet) that I am currently reading to my boys survived a tornado in the chapter I read Sunday night too. There were tornado sirens going off all during the night that night (and last night too for that matter). Mercifully I slept through most of them. Right now I have tornados on the brain I guess.  I am a person who likes certainty and safety and the volatile weather has not allowed me to feel either emotion with regularity recently. We are in for more scary weather today. I guess it's just something I will have to deal with right now while I wait for the storm to blow over.