My house was not demolished by a tornado today. I was sleeping and received sudden word from my father that there was a “tornado warning”. My mind quickly came to and put two and two together: a “tornado warning” was different from a “tornado watch”, which is what we usually get around here. A “tornado warning” meant there was an actual tornado. As in, we were in actual danger.

There was a time when I was a child that I did not know what a tornado was. There were thunderstorms that came and went, but one time my father told me calmly (but firmly) that we needed to go down to the basement because there was a “tornado”. I did not understand what was going on, but he seemed very serious, and so my mother and I went down into the basement for a short while.

They calmly explained what a tornado was and its destructive power. They explained how it could destroy a house, how there was nothing that could be done to stop it, and that the best course of action was to hide in the basement, preferably in the south-west corner. This frightened me. I would ask endless questions about tornadoes: How did they work? How often did they happen? Did anyone they knew ever die in a tornado?

One time I asked my father not to talk about tornadoes and he asked “What do you think is going to happen, a tornado is going to knock on your door and say ‘Oooh, I’m a tornado, let me in your house’?” I should have laughed, but this admittedly absurd image actually scared me, and so I frantically asked him not to say that.

Today, however, I felt little to no dread, even though there was a tornado apparently in the area. I waited for my mother to get out of the bathroom, and then we went down the stairs with me carrying the dog (who was too old to take the stairs himself). As I went down the stairs, my pants fell down with me carrying the dog, but I felt little embarrassment, only explaining to my father not to look.

We stayed down in the basement and my parents looked at their smartphones. My father saw fit to turn out the lights, explaining that we could somehow see a tornado coming better. I looked out the window and saw nothing except a seemingly mundane storm and then felt self-conscious about standing near the window, which could seemingly be a source of flying broken glass if there were an actual tornado coming.

My father picked up a battery-powered light and held it under his chin, making a stereotypical “scary-face”. I said, “Oh, wow, you’re Mr. Tornado!” or something to that effect, and I thought it would be funny if there were some legendary being called Mr. Tornado who would haunt people stuck in their basements trying to shield themselves from tornadoes. I was mostly bored, however, as this tornado had most inconveniently interrupted my nap.

We stayed a few minutes in the dark basement with only the cloud-covered sky illuminating us through the windows until my parents announced that the threat of the tornado has passed and that it was time to go upstairs. I would have to carry the dog, it was decided, and as I carried him up the stairs he didn’t seem to like it very much, but mostly he didn’t protest. By the time I reached the top, the sun was beginning to shine, and as my handicapped mother slowly made her way up the stairs, I felt that this minor ordeal was almost over. My nap, however, was interrupted and I felt not the desire to sleep again, but to write.

If I were a child, I would have been terrified, but this was not the case and I felt very little anxiety through the ordeal, the days where a tornado would have me panicked left to my childhood.