Echo, echo, echo...

Question: Am I the only one who hears things? Gimme a minute, it might sound less crazy or obvious in a second. This afternoon, as I was sort of watching bits of the new Amityville Horror and marveling at how proud ABC Family seemed to be of its newfound love of bad made for TV movies (okay, fine, I was trying to remember if Death of a Cheerleader was the Tori Spelling one filmed at the house next to mine when I was a kid. For the record, I don't think it is) I thought I heard Mums calling for me. Which was odd as she sounded a bit pissed and it was three in the afternoon.

She doesn't recall calling for me, and usually when I stumble down the stairs, Dad will helpfully say, "Your mother was looking for you," even if she's standing right there. He didn't say anything. Okay, possible, she says, that she was fussing at one of the dogs and since I can't hear worth a damn if I'm watching TV in my room with the door shut... fine. Tonight, as I was snoozing after dinner, I thought, again, that I heard her yelling. Frantically.

Only this cannot be because... it cannot be. It keeps happening. Usually not multiple times in one day, but occasionally. It's basically an echo in my head of some other time and it is confusing and annoying and, to be honest, a little freaky to say the least.

But not as annoying as going to snag a bag of popcorn that I've been dreaming about for two nights... only to find roaches in the box and yes, they'd eaten through the plastic and through the bag. Thoughtful little fuckers got themselves squished real fast.

20 years later

Time for a trip down memory lane.

As the paper never tires of telling us, it's been 20 years since my very first hurricane. Until then, I'd been a little fascinated by them. I know, sharks and hurricanes, I was a little bundle of sunshine, eh? I could rattle off facts and figures about these things to the point that my parents were probably a little concerned.

But nothing could prepare me for the thought of a real one slamming into my city. I was more than a little scared but my parents did a pretty good job of not really showing how concerned they might have been, so there was that. I still remember watching the weather channel obsessively and asking Mom what would happen. It was late at night, particularly since I was eight at the time, and she played it off very well. If Widge asked the same thing of me now? I'd be far less cool. And I'm the rational one. (Scary thought, eh?)

Bonus points for realizing that I'm twenty years older than Widge, so he's the same age I was then.

Anyway, this is one of those things I remember a lot about and probably will for quite awhile. I remember the last day of school before they let us out for far longer than I think they intended. My teacher was sick and sent in a letter or something saying she was so sorry not to be there for us, and that scared me more than a lot of things up til then had. I remember it was sunny, really sunny, but extremely windy all day. I remember the neighbors' trashcans blowing back down their driveways and down the streets that morning. I remember a lot of my neighbors had left and my mother insisting my grandfather leave, too. That he leave early so he wouldn't be caught out on the road in the storm. And when explaining this to people now, why my mother made sure her father left, while keeping her two young children home, I say this: Brittle. Diabetic.

The next thing I remember is Dad taping all the windows, and then Sean and I are in his room playing. The sky has finally darkened and I'm looking out all the windows (pretty much one wall of his room was windows, and half the second wall was, too) and we're drawing pictures. I remember looking at all the trees blowing in the wind, and fixating on one tree in particular. I knew, knew, knew it was going to fall. And in that surety of being eight, I told my father and he pointed to the pine trees in the back that weren't bending and told me that those were the ones most likely to snap, because they would not bend to the wind.

I smiled, nodded, and cleaned up my mess. But I knew that tree would fall. I was just hoping it didn't fall on us.

Dinner. Watching TV. Parents wondered why the hell the various meteorologists were all at the beaches or on the Battery when it had begun to rain and you knew nothing good was going to come of this. Dumbasses, I believe was the general consensus. The power flickered and when it went out, we sat there waiting to see if it would come back. It did a couple of times and then... dark.

We gathered the rest of our stuff, closed all the doors to our various rooms, and sat in the downstairs hall. I don't really remember much of that until the rain started coming down sideways so that it was coming under the front door. The parentals weren't sure if it was rain or if the flooding was that bad (our front yard routinely went under water) so... they deliberated and decided that it would be best if we moved upstairs until further notice. Everyone sat outside their own doors for the most part. Dad went outside during the eye of the storm and Mom freaked out. I just remember that it was so quiet.

Sometime during all that, you could feel it as each tree in the yard fell. Later, when we surveyed the damage the next morning, we found out that the tree I was so sure would fall? Had been the first in our yard to do just that.

The neighbors on both sides suffered trees falling through their houses and we got lucky as hell. Then again, so did they. One of them had stayed (his family went someplace safer) and he was with the dogs when the tree hit. Luckily, it was the other side of the house. I don't think the other neighbor was home.

The next day, I can safely say we earned our disaster area nomination. Trees and power lines and... it was everywhere. Trees all over our lawn. Somewhere there's a video Dad took for the insurance company, and you can see the boy and I walking over bits of trees and things while Dad talks to his uncle John who was visiting, bringing us a generator since we were without power for a month or more.

I want to say it took months to get the power back, but I'm pretty sure we had it back by Halloween. It seemed like longer as a kid, though. Not entirely sure, however, since that was the year Halloween was basically outlawed. You couldn't go trick or treating, so instead that year we went to the fair at Porter Gaud, a party at a house in the back portion of the neighborhood, and a halloween party either at my aunt's or with her. I was a princess in blue. Just in case you needed to know.

After awhile you tire of all your food tasting like Sterno. You get tired of no one wanting to play Monopoly, and when they do, no one can finish a game. You get tired of no electricity or water. Showers outside only with a hose, and even then your parents aren't entirely sure it's a good idea to be using that, but it's been so damn long you can't use the stuff they have you put in the tub prior to the storm.

There was the city wide curfew which scared me more than the storm itself. The cleanup that took forever and involved a whole lot of chainsaws. My aunt visiting us after curfew one night, scaring the crap out of me because you shouldn't look outside your window and see a light bobbing towards your house as the person holding the flashlight has to walk around things because the city still hasn't picked up the trees or anything at this point. (Which is why she was walking. She couldn't drive to the house, just the church down the street.)

I remember the box of toys my aunts and uncles sent us to keep us amused but also out of our parents' way. Spirograph! Paper dolls! You have no idea how much I loved paper dolls, man.

I think I'll go and ask Mums how long it really took for power and water to return. Mums says three weeks and some change.

And just for fun, I also remember begging Mums to buy some issue of Cosmo because I decided I was all grown up. I was reading through thinking, "what the heck?" and walked past Mums, who was a smoker at the time, and she accidentally burned the hell out of me. Cig burns hurt, man.

Hugo, a story in pictures.