| Three Minutes and Thirty-Nine Seconds |
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| 05:41pm 02/10/2006 |
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"Hey, what's up?"
"Not much... I'm reading right now. What about you?"
"Not too much. Hey, did you hear the whole other wave of storms that went through last night? One must have struck two feet outside my house. It was so bright!"
"Yeah, there were some booms all right. They nearly shook me out of bed at two in the morning. More are on the way today, I hear."
"I am in the store shopping for some dinner between instructions, but I just wanted to call and say what a good time I had last night. It was spontaneous, and not something that people often think to do... just drive into a storm and randomly follow it throughout Fox Point. We rock."
"Well, you rock. It was your idea."
"I wish we could have had rain slickers. Then we could have stood outside instead of sitting in my car. We could have stood outside and... and risked getting hit... but that would have been cool."
"I don't think I clarified how much it meant to me to do that. I had a blast. Did you catch up on sleep?"
"I did, and I feel better now, thanks. I have to get going now, but I just wanted to call and say hello and that yesterday was fun. I'll call you later tonight."
A phone call just to tell me that. Perhaps I hang too much hope on such kind unprovoked words. |
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| Storm, Again |
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| 08:53pm 02/10/2006 |
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He called me again and told me to go to my window. "Let's see if we can experience the same lightning together."
We did, and we could each hear the echo of thunder on the other end of the line. His was always more delayed than mine.
I was intrigued. "Tell me the story again."
"Well, me and my buddy were out in this farm field when a storm surprised us from the south. We were running back to the house, that the land sloped to this low point where there was a single tree surrounded by some water. I was running, and the hair on my arms and neck began to stand up. I looked down at my hand to examine the hairs, when there was this brightness over to my left that made my left eye squint shut. A bolt of lightning attached to a smaller bolt came streaking out of the sky. The big bolt hit the tree, and the other smaller bolt struck the ground just a few feet from where we were. It sent us both flying through the air and knocked us out cold. I don't know how long we were out. I woke up flat on my back, looking up at the rain. My friend had landed face down. We both had burns on our arms since it had been so close. My back was burned because the ground was so hot where I landed." |
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