Almost Toast

Another Florida story, which almost was my last.

Summer 2000

I came close to being toasted today. We had this really violent thunderstorm. I could feel the pressure really drop and sensed I shouldn’t turn on anything electrical, not even the air conditioner. So, I didn’t. I was standing by the electric stove considering whether to make popcorn when all of a sudden BAM and then this flash comes right through the closed kitchen-door jalousies. Burning cinders shoot through the air and bounce across my kitchen floor to the opposite wall. The burglar alarm goes off in the mobile home next door (where the guy who wears the loin cloth lives). My kitchen looks and smells like somebody has just shot off a fourth of July fireworks display. “Should I beat out the burning cinders with this book I have in my hand?” I wondered. By the time I had decided the book was a bad choice the cinders had burned out. I was within a couple feet of all this and it was all over before I fully realized what happened. I spent the duration of the storm in the bathroom since I can’t even get another pair of shorts in my closet, let alone myself. My stove didn’t work and in the living room my TV and VCR didn’t work even though all my other electronics, plugged into the same surge protector did. I called my landlady and she called a friend up the street and he tracked down a blown fuse, replaced it and that fixed the stove. The TV and VCR may be history, though. Since both of them are hooked up to the TV cable, I think the cloud-to-ground lightning came through the underground cable and toasted them, unfortunately. Well, at least it’s not ratings month, when they show all the good stuff. Happily, my computer’s just fine. I had just started to research home owners insurance, too. The lightning fried Loin Cloth’s alarm system and also fried my next-door neighbor’s TV, in the adjoining apt.

So, should I tell you all my delightful stories about foot fungus, hairy underarms (that my new coworker at the Marco Island newspaper where I sold advertising for a few weeks one summer, told me) and lightning shooting through people’s homes, I’d bet you’d be just really looking forward to your impending Florida vacation. Oh, and I forgot to mention that after I finally got the lizard out of my apartment after a week, I saw the tree frog sitting on my lamp, got it out only to discover that the frog was probably hoping for a substantial meal in the palmetto bug I found crawling across my bathroom floor. But I swept it out only to catch another frog’s foot in the door jam when I closed the door. Don’t be surprised if my next story comes to you from the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains where it’s too cold and dry for anything to grow.

~Samantha

Henderson Creek

Naples, Florida