Well, This Is Interesting
I'd always believed that near-death experiences came in two varieties: the ones where death jumps out in front of you, and the ones where it creeps up from behind. Example: facing a bullet that misses you is the first kind. Finding out that the flight you just missed went down over the Rockies is the second.
The first is probably the scarier, since it usually requires you to jump out the way of your doom, and relying on your own feeble instincts and talents to survive usually only serves to remind you just how feeble they are. On the other hand, you did manage to pull your act together well enough to live to tell the tale, so there's at least one self-administered pat on the back due you, I'd say.
The second kind is insidious and subtle--rather than your jumping out of the way, it basically depends on Death deciding, quite randomly, that mmmmmno, not today, today I'm going to take someone else. Which maybe explains why we don't talk about the second kind during barroom exchanges of life-stories; they're essentially extended illustrations of your own impotence, and who the hell wants to tell a story in which s/he is the inert non-victim of circumstance.
Despite this collective silence, I think that most of us have had the second kind more than a few times; in fact, I suspect that we've had more such experiences than we know about--who knows how many times we've come frighteningly close to getting smeared across the business end of a semi while looking the wrong way? Plenty, I'll bet. But that's the up-side to the second kind of death: the oblivious quality to it. You don't see it coming, so you're impotent, but unaware. Whereas with the first kind, you've got the terror, but you get to feel like a hero.
There is, as it turns out, a third kind.
My thoughts turn to such morbidity because over the past few days, I've been under a persistent threat of injury and/or death, all thanks to weather conditions that have turned the local TV stations into a 24-hour fright-fest of interrupted programming and Doppler radar images that seem to be turning colors I've never seen before. The storms that have been freight-training across the state have caused the local river (a not-insubstantial one) to flood, and in some cases, flash-flood, and more rain is on the way, making the threat increase exponentially all the time. Simultaneously, we've had hail that ranges from golf-ball to baseball sized (impressive work, God!), and, of course, tornadoes. Several times. So I'm placed in the comic position of being told to get down into the basement (the people on the TV were really quite insistent about this, and since the 'live shot' they used to show their viewers just how dangerous this situation is is a shot of a street not five blocks away from me, I'm inclined to take their word for it), but that in the event of flash-flooding, I should for God's sake get to higher ground and avoid basements at all cost.
Basically, I'm fucked either way. And while I could shrug it off the first couple of days, it's getting on to about a week now. And it's threatening to continue well past the weekend. My nerves are getting dicey, to be honest--and, judging by the frayed appearance of the meteorologists on the aforementioned local stations, I'm not alone in this.
Problem is, I don't get to be oblivious (hard to be when the house is blinding white by lightning so close you can smell the ozone, then shaking so hard you can hear the cutlery doing the boogie-woogie in the next room), and I don't get to be heroic--because tornados and flash-floods are going to be Rock to my Scissors every time; there's just no standing up to them. Essentially, I'm being told to sit here and wait for Zeus to decide when or if he's had enough. And I'd feel like more of a wuss if it weren't for the fact that my neighbors keep coming out onto their porches during the few breaks in the deluge and giving each other what are very obviously "thank God we're still alive" hugs. I do not need this...
The first is probably the scarier, since it usually requires you to jump out the way of your doom, and relying on your own feeble instincts and talents to survive usually only serves to remind you just how feeble they are. On the other hand, you did manage to pull your act together well enough to live to tell the tale, so there's at least one self-administered pat on the back due you, I'd say.
The second kind is insidious and subtle--rather than your jumping out of the way, it basically depends on Death deciding, quite randomly, that mmmmmno, not today, today I'm going to take someone else. Which maybe explains why we don't talk about the second kind during barroom exchanges of life-stories; they're essentially extended illustrations of your own impotence, and who the hell wants to tell a story in which s/he is the inert non-victim of circumstance.
Despite this collective silence, I think that most of us have had the second kind more than a few times; in fact, I suspect that we've had more such experiences than we know about--who knows how many times we've come frighteningly close to getting smeared across the business end of a semi while looking the wrong way? Plenty, I'll bet. But that's the up-side to the second kind of death: the oblivious quality to it. You don't see it coming, so you're impotent, but unaware. Whereas with the first kind, you've got the terror, but you get to feel like a hero.
There is, as it turns out, a third kind.
My thoughts turn to such morbidity because over the past few days, I've been under a persistent threat of injury and/or death, all thanks to weather conditions that have turned the local TV stations into a 24-hour fright-fest of interrupted programming and Doppler radar images that seem to be turning colors I've never seen before. The storms that have been freight-training across the state have caused the local river (a not-insubstantial one) to flood, and in some cases, flash-flood, and more rain is on the way, making the threat increase exponentially all the time. Simultaneously, we've had hail that ranges from golf-ball to baseball sized (impressive work, God!), and, of course, tornadoes. Several times. So I'm placed in the comic position of being told to get down into the basement (the people on the TV were really quite insistent about this, and since the 'live shot' they used to show their viewers just how dangerous this situation is is a shot of a street not five blocks away from me, I'm inclined to take their word for it), but that in the event of flash-flooding, I should for God's sake get to higher ground and avoid basements at all cost.
Basically, I'm fucked either way. And while I could shrug it off the first couple of days, it's getting on to about a week now. And it's threatening to continue well past the weekend. My nerves are getting dicey, to be honest--and, judging by the frayed appearance of the meteorologists on the aforementioned local stations, I'm not alone in this.
Problem is, I don't get to be oblivious (hard to be when the house is blinding white by lightning so close you can smell the ozone, then shaking so hard you can hear the cutlery doing the boogie-woogie in the next room), and I don't get to be heroic--because tornados and flash-floods are going to be Rock to my Scissors every time; there's just no standing up to them. Essentially, I'm being told to sit here and wait for Zeus to decide when or if he's had enough. And I'd feel like more of a wuss if it weren't for the fact that my neighbors keep coming out onto their porches during the few breaks in the deluge and giving each other what are very obviously "thank God we're still alive" hugs. I do not need this...
posted by Yr. Hmbl. & Obdt. at 9:34 PM
1 Comments:
You know, in my line of work I *have* been asked about this type of situation before. Perhaps the first answer might be always to live above the level of any probable flooding. Certainly I feel most comfortable with a hundred feet or more of elevation between myself and the nearest water or valley bottom. However, assuming that at least temporarily you're atuck with your present arrangements, you're probably better off hanging out in the cellar during a tornado watch. Flooding, even of the flashy kind typically won't fill a basement completely with water in an instant, but an F5 could touch down in literally under five minutes, leaving behind only a few scattered boards. Just be ready to run upstairs if you feel water ponding about your feet.
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