Tornadoes and Idiots

There has been a lot of stress in our house lately concerning tornadoes. We have had a rash of pretty severe thunderstorms complete with high winds, hail, heavy rain, thunder, lightning, and tornadoes. Mr. Laura does not handle these well at all. On Friday night as another storm was ramping up and Mr. Laura was becoming increasingly distressed, I decided to google some information on South Carolina and tornadoes. I found a website that contains a database of all tornadoes and their corresponding strength on the Fujita scale since the 1950's. South Carolina has never had a F4 or F5 tornado and, at least according to the database, no fatalities have ever been a direct result of a tornado in these parts. Mr. Laura was feeling reassured and we began to play around on the website checking out other states' statistics. Soon the rest of the nestlings had gathered around my laptop. Mr. Edwards noticed that there were links to video clips of tornadoes. Soon we were checking out lots and lots of storm chaser videos in the midwest. The enormity and power of the tornadoes were both frightening and impressive.

Many of the clips had audio as well. They were usually the voices of early twenty-something sounding men. The words "dude", "awesome", and "cool" were repeated over and over. Other comments included "Hurry up man, we are going to miss it", "I want someone to take my picture with it coming towards me", "Oh my god! It just sucked up that house", and "We're getting close. There is debris hitting our car".

The audio led to questions from the nestlings as to who was filming the tornadoes?, who was making them chase the tornadoes?, do they get paid to do this?, and why would anyone want to do this?

I explained that many of them were probably not being paid, but instead got a thrill out of being that close to such a powerful force of nature. The nestlings were not convinced. They also wanted to know why it seemed that no women were chasing the tornadoes. I made some attempt at explaining that, in general, as boys get older and go through puberty that they experience feelings of invincibility and immortality and therefore are willing to take more and more risks than they may be willing to take at other times in their life.

At this point Mr. Edwards asked, "You mean we are going to act like idiots when we're 20"?

"Hot Girls" and a History Lesson

Recently Mr. Garvey, Mr. Laura, and I were sitting in the car waiting on Mr. Edwards to get out of an art class he attends. I was lost in thought as Mr. Garvey and Mr. Laura began a conversation. I was snapped back to reality by the topic of their conversation. They were discussing "Hot Girls". A bit troubled by where they may have gotten the term and what it meant but not wanting to jump to any conclusions, I listened in. Both Mr. Garvey and Mr. Laura were in agreement that they were not interested in "hot girls" and would never ever consider marrying one. I decided to inquire as to exactly what a "hot girl" might be. As they explained, a "hot girl" is a girl who uses her looks to try and make you fall in love with her. She evidently resorts to this surface trickery because she is majorly flawed on the inside and is trying to hide that fact. Both of them were adamant that it was more important that their future girlfriends or wives be beautiful on the inside than the outside. Mr. Laura summed it up for me with a question.....Momma, he asked, would you rather marry the most handsome man in the world who also happens to be really mean to you or the nicest man in the world who happens to not look so nice?

A few days later we were reading about Julius Caesar, his adopted son, Octavius, Antony, and Cleopatra. In our reading we learned that even though Julius Caesar had conquered Egypt, he had been so charmed by Cleopatra that he allowed her to remain Queen of Egypt. After Caesar's death, Antony and Octavius split rule of the empire. Antony moved to Alexandria where he met, fell in love with, and married Cleopatra. Sharing rule of the Roman empire with Antony did not satisfy Octavius so he made war on both Antony and Cleopatra. After being defeated by Octavius, Antony committed suicide. As the story goes, Cleopatra then tried to woo Octavius as a means to remain Queen of Egypt. Octavius, however, did not fall for her womanly charms and planned to have her taken back to Rome and paraded through the streets as was done with other prisoners of war. Upon hearing of Octavius's plans, Cleopatra then killed herself.

After we finished our reading, Mr. Laura asked, "You mean Cleopatra was a "Hot Queen"? to which Mr. Garvey replied, "Yeah, but I really really like Octavius. He could see she was a 'hot queen' and did not fall for it".