STORMY WEATHER

What's the deal with all these awful tornadoes in the U.S. this spring? It seems like every time I turn on the tv news, another town or city has been ravaged by a twister. Traumatic childhood memories of watching Dorothy and Toto struggle to survive a tornado in The Wizard of Oz come to the surface when I hear the word "tornado." It probably doesn't help that when I was a kindergartener our family lived in Kansas, smack-dab in the middle of tornado territory. Instead of (or possibly in addition to) fire drills, we had tornado drills in school. Scary stuff for a five-year-old, indeed. And one tornado that touched down was so close by that my mother took me and my sister down into the basement to make sure we would survive if it struck our home (mercifully, it didn't).
So, I'll be really happy when this year's busy tornado season winds down (no pun intended). To paraphrase Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I may not be in Kansas any more -- but with this spring's stormy weather, I'm beginning to feel like I am.