Surviving The Storm(s)

It should come as no surprise that I'm upset about hurricanes. Not because we don't have them here on the west (or left) coast so I don't get to witness their ferocity and majesty up close, but because they are so special that they get names.

Naming things is very important in some parts of the world. I've heard that God, himself, gave Adam the task of assigning names to all the animals, even the ones he'd be unlikely to ever see in Eden, and from birth on, kids are taught the names of everything they run across. Or, over. Or, around.

Later in life we use names to show off how important and knowledgeable we are. We're not taking seriously if we can't tell someone the name of some thing, and it is in this way that we annoint people as experts.

When, in fact, they're merely people who've bothered to memorize mostly arbitrary words, but that's not the point.

According to the weather experts and an unending series of annoying pop-ups from my web browser that alert me to severe weather conditions, a series of “major” storms were set to strike California this weekend. Three, I believe, was the number, but none of these storms have names.

I’ve mentioned before how much more serious and smart we are than we were when I was growing up, all innocent and uninformed. Then, it used to rain, which meant I’d need to put on my yellow slicker before walking to school. Now, of course, no one walks to school because the streets are fairly bristeling with child molestors and gang members, none of whom existed when I was young. None, that is, except that weird, creepy guy down the street that we all knew about and avoided, but who had great candy for Halloween and, perhaps, other occasions.

Now, it no longer rains. Instead, we have rain showers, storms, or, best of all, rain events. These all sound much more professional and adult, and it’s no surprise that people use the terms to sound even more important than they really are. There’s nothing like adding useless verbage to inflate one’s ego.

The storms, such as they were, arrived here around eleven yesterday morning, with a smattering of drops that didn’t even get my dog wet. By night, however, the wind began gusting and much more water fell from the sky. I also momentarily lost power about four times last night before deciding that I didn’t want to subject my poor, ailing computer(s) to any more drastic experiences. It wasn’t doing them any good, and it was making me frustrated and scared.

I’m not sure if the power was going out from something inside my home, from lightning strikes on the power system, or from some other cause. I didn’t hear any thunder, but I wouldn’t expect a storm that doesn’t deserve a name to be dramatic enough to have any.

Right before I wanted to add an entry, I lost power again and considered that a sign. The wind may have blown with even greater velocity during the night, and even greater amounts of water may have fallen from the sky, but in my little corner of the world very little worth writing about happened.

If the next two storms are anything like the first, I have nothing to fear, not like the people in the rest of the state who will wish they had a name to give this atmospheric phenomenon so that they could talk about it later.