Those of you to points south and southeast may have heard about the tornadoes that ravaged parts of North Texas on Friday night. That includes the Fort Worth suburb of Haltom City -- close to where my wife was -- and East Dallas, not too far from where I was, when the thing went down.
I spent most of my Friday in Dallas, helping my sister move into her new digs in midtown. Swanky. (By the way, if you want to find out who your true friends are, ask them to help you move.) All day, the weather cooperated, the work was hard, and I was burning calories.
Lori, meanwhile, worked a long day in Dallas and then caught a ride with a friend back toward Fort Worth at the end of the day. They were supposed to go to her car, which I had left at the station for her before catching a train to Dallas.
Instead, they drove right into the head of the storm system as it roared through Fort Worth into Northeast Tarrant County. The van they were in was pelted with golfball-sized hail, and they retreated to a nearby mall garage to wait it out.
I'm minding my own business helping move couches and such when I get a frantic call from Lori that her car was in the process of being totaled by hail. While I'm trying to reassure her, I hear a noise in the background -- tornado sirens. The bad weather was on its way to Dallas in a hurry.
So now I'm rushing along with the others to get the truck loaded and on its way when I get another frantic call from the wife -- turns out now our house alarm is going off with no one home, and the monitoring company couldn't get ahold of anyone so the police are on their way there.
I spend a few frantic minutes trying to find the number for the alarm company and meanwhile, we head in a hurry to my sister's new place. We stop at a convenience store for a lock (the truck's gotta be secure so the tornado will take everything one piece, I presume) and that's when the skies open up and start pouring down torrential rains.
Car getting totaled, wife being frantic, cops being dispatched, truck needs to be locked. We get back to the new apartment and I run into the rain to put the lock on.
I slip on the painted concrete and fall right to the ground, skinning my arm. I'm bleeding. Angry, I get back up and run to put the lock on the truck.
The lock is too small.
Within seconds, I'm underneath a canopy calling the missus. She's on her way to the alarm-triggered home with her friend in tow. In a panic, I call the alarm company and cancel dispatch, then think better of it and call again to request dispatch all over again. If they didn't like me before, now they really don't like me. (My inner monologue: It's probably just hail or a thunderclap that's set the alarm off, right? Are you sure? Sure, I'm sure. Right? Um...)
The storm passes by Lori and suddenly it's sunny over there. We're getting drenched. Lori gets home and the house is OK. Cops pass by and ask if it's alright, and it turns out it is. It seems to have been hail on the windows, but no damage.
The storm passes Dallas quickly too, but it rains intermittently for the rest of the night. We move a few more things before giving up for the night and retiring to our current favorite Dallas haunt.
A day has passed, and like my arm, the whole affair seems to be scabbed over. Until the next Texas storm, that is.
And the car? Turned out, not a single ding or dent.
Good for you, Mazda. Good for you.
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1 comment:
We bow down to your literary superiority. I, for one, could never relay such events with the eloquence our exhibit. Neither would I summarize so succinctly with a clear punchline.
As I called Carrie over to read your posting I found myself saying "Come on over here, Carrie! Come looky at these here big words and high fangled talkin' by Mister Rodweegez."
Yeah. Oh and by the way, put some neosporin on the arm abrasion. Clinical studies suggest that neosporin treated wounds heal faster than a bandage alone.
Glad to hear the Mazda is okay.
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