The storm of September 2010

TOTATO (AKA TORNADO)

09-16-10

My daughter, Cassie used to call them "Totatoes". She was terrified one would come here. I would tell her "there are never tornados in Queens".

When I took her to Orlando, we had so much fun at Universal that we spent two days there. They had a movie “experience” (which meant you stood still and felt like you were almost on the set of the movie.)  The movie, of course, was “Twister”. It wasn’t the contortionist game on a plastic mat, but the movie about “TOTATOS”.

Not wanting to appear scared, and wanting me to see it (she was so sweet), she came into the building with a throng of sweaty, sunburned vacationers, and began the shuffle towards the doors that would lead us to “the experience”. I knew she was nervous, but they had screens high up on the walls, showing scenes from the movie, and every time those doors opened you could hear a building being destroyed, or a cow flying.

After 15 minutes she became hysterical. I had to find an employee to let us out the emergency door.  However, Cassie was (and is) very brave, and pissed at herself for causing a scene. She insisted that since we were going back the following day, she was going to go through those doors no matter what. She was a scared, anxious; a little mess, but she made it. She jumped into my arms, and I held her through the entire “experience”. She heard it, but she couldn’t bring herself to see it. She spent the entire time with her head buried in my sleeve.

A few years later, it was my turn to be scared.  We had a wicked storm like the one we had today. A big old tree with rotten roots fell on our house, scraped right down the front of it. It sounded like the world was ending. I remember closing my eyes, putting my hands over my ears. I was sure that when I opened my eyes, the front wall, which was 3 feet away from me, would be ripped off, along with the rest of the front of the house. When it was over, I opened my eyes and the front of the house was still there.

The old tree pushed in the front door. There were tree limbs four steps up. You could not get out the door. Lucky we had another exit, because that tree was going nowhere. Cassie was in the bathroom with her father, who was visiting. She was scared, but she let him put her on the tree to take a picture.

She gave me dirty looks for days. It was good that she did not know that another old tree had fallen on a car around the corner, and it killed this elderly couple. Sad.

She's 18 now, and when the tornado warnings were blaring on the TV today, it was like she was a little girl again. She was excited but scared, white as a sheet, and I could have sworn she gave me that same dirty look.

Well, it was a wicked storm on 9/16/2010 around 6:00pm, but there were no “totatoes”, and no tree broke into our house.

Instead, at 11:30PM, the cable TV went out – almost 6 hours later. When I called, the representative told me that 90% of Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island had no service, and their technicians “were working on it”.

Shit, that was a new one.



I believe she was around this age at the height of

the "totato" scare...