Twister

Ask people, “What scares you the most about the Wizard of Oz?” and you’ll hear  either,”The flying monkeys!”or “the tornado!” (although I’ll admit the munchkins are a wee bit spooky and the green witch kind of reminds me of a girl I once went out with.)

I’m a tornado guy. It terrifies me.

Why? Because I figured out early on that flying monkeys aren’t real. Tornadoes are.

Whenever that piece of spinning hose (I still say it is the best movie tornado ever) came on the screen, I’d hide behind the chair in my parent’s den. Forty years later, I still hate that cinematic cyclone. And I hate real ones even more.

I live in Mississippi and we get swarms of them. I’ve watched as a funnel roared over my house.  I watched a waterspout plow across the Reservoir. I’ve seen a community obliterated by a catastrophic EF-5 storm. I’ve smelled the fresh scent of pine from downed trees. I’ve felt my stomach drop when the weather radio went off.  I’ve sat huddled in the bathroom with my family, praying the “rotation” the TV meteorologist talked about would dissipate before it got to my house.

Today a massive tornado tore through Kemper and Noxubee counties.  Structures and lives were destroyed. A life was lost.

I watched Tony Sudduth’s video of the huge wedge tornado as it ripped across the East Mississippi countryside and then did what I did 40 years ago. I hid behind the chair.

Man, I hate tornadoes. I’ll take flying monkeys any day.