The Tornado Inside Me

As I turned off the radio, I stepped outside.

Photo by Nikolas Noonan on Unsplash

The weatherman just issued a Tornado Warning.

I did not understand fully what this meant, as I always get a watch and a warning confused. A warning is that they are active and happening; a watch is a possible Tornado. (Google confirms this is correct)

Either way, the sky turns black, as I saw when I stepped outside onto my porch. This was a new phenomenon for me. Kentucky had tornados, just not in the part of the state I grew up in.

Even if we had them in Kentucky, there was nothing to do; we did not have a basement. I remember tornado drills in school but never an active watch or warning. Plus, it was the days before the internet, and we had no telephone, only a radio.

Or….

Maybe we weren´t always worried about as many things in life until we moved north. Life seemed simpler before the move.

My grandmother always told us we must go to the basement when there was a tornado threat. None of us kids wanted to go to the basement; it was scary.

Plus, my cousins always enjoyed telling us stories about how haunted it was. Trust me, if you ever stepped foot into a basement that was all soil and built over a hundred years ago, you also would believe it was…