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My Inner Helen Hunt

Posted August 27, 2008

At any point between 1996 and 1999, had you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my eyes would've widened, a grin spread across my face, and I'd have blurted it out without hesitation: "I wanna be a tornado chaser!"

Bearing in mind that my only knowledge of what tornado chasers actually do had come from watching "Twister" way too much, it's safe to say that I was a very imaginative kid. But there on the screen in her dirty khakis, her stringy mop hair, and her tight white tank top, Helen Hunt encompassed everything I wanted to be when I grew up - boyish yet still beautiful, angry and driven, fearless to the core. Only slightly wind-blown.

Last night, as the storms raged outside my office and then my house (yes, I drove in that mess), my mind went back to all the many amazing storms that I've witnessed, and all the times I've thought "I could so do this for a living." Somehow I don't think tornado chasing would pay well as an occupation, but boy would it be fun.

I distinctly recall one such afternoon when my mother was driving us down Hwy. 501 outside Conway. It was storming cats and dogs outside and we were just passing Lake Busbee and the Grainger power plant when mom and I both realized that something was forming just beyond the lake. A finger of clouds swooping down to poke the earth. Mom hit the gas and within another 5 minutes, we were safe in the comfort of our home. But we're pretty sure what we saw that day was a tornado forming. It didn't have to glitz and glamour of the F-5s and F-4s featured in the movies, but it did a fairly good job of scaring the crap out of us.

A few years later, the day before we were leaving for camp - and driving ourselves there for the first time ever - my best friend and her boyfriend's sister were at the beach. A storm began to form over the water and as it got darker, they decided to go ahead and leave the beach. Just minutes after they left, a waterspout formed just off the shore and began to move onto land - this was the (locally) famed waterspout/tornado that nearly took out the Myrtle Beach Pavilion in 2001. At one point my friend's car was actually picked up and sat back down by the winds. Some of her glass was broken, and she was quite shaken up. Imagine her surprise when my second question after "Are you okay?" was "What was it like?! Tell me everything!"

So last night, I won't lie - I did the stupid thing. I walked outside at the height of the storm, stared into the sky, and waited to see if anything would happen. Of course, I didn't want to get hit by a tornado...it's just that the curious little kid in me was coming out to see what was going on. She couldn't help herself.

Eventually it all died down and life went on, but I told my husband last night - "You know they do tornado chasing trips out in the plains states now, right?" He just gave me that look and said "Be happy with your nice, safe, corporate job, mmmkay?"