Storms...

fiction

Every city has the storm, the one everyone talks about years later. The one that somehow everyone got caught in even though that's impossible. Afterall some people had to have been at home that day right?

When she was growing up it was the windstorm where they had to string ropes up downtown for people to hold on to to sort of pull themselves along the sidewalks. When she moved she just missed the great ice storm that wiped out power lines and trees and stopped her new city in its tracks for a week. And when people brought up that storm they were always met with, yeah, but how about the Columbus Day floods where the river flooded three blocks into the city.

Even in places where there were always storms there was still always the storm. Yeah, this tornado was bad but the one of 2012 was three city blocks wide and moved so slowly it pulled up everything up to 10 feet deep. This hurricane was nothing but the one in 86 wiped out an entire town on the coast and the entire coast line itself. Sometimes divers will find old cars way out in the ocean that had to have been from that day.

The storm. The storm to end all storms. The storm that all other storms could never be as bad as.

The storm that had passed. That had ended. That we had made it through. Remember how bad that storm was, how this storm couldn't possible match it, and know that we made it through.

That's what she thought the storm was all about. A coping mechanism. A way of saying this isn't as bad as it seems. It too shall pass. We will make it through. No matter how terrible it seems we will survive. Afterall we survived the storm of 84, 86, 99, 08 and on and on. Every city has the storm. Every city had their story of resilience. Of grit. Of the time they all came together to help out those who needed it. The storm gave them their own hero story. They made it through the challenge and ended up better people on the other side.

She sat in the basement listening to the freight train roaring overhead hoping that this would be pooh poohed by the neighbors as no big deal instead of becoming the one they all talked about.

Nobody wanted to actually be part of the storm.

At least she didn't.

(Writing prompt: Someone is talking about the weather)