Struck By Lightning

From nineteen eighty-one to two thousand and three, I wore the patches of the Signal Corps. I was an Army communicator. The symbol of a communicator is often that of lightning. I've come close over the years, close to being struck, but I have never feared the lightning. Once, while on an ROTC land navigation course, I actually sat next to a fellow cadet who was struck and hospitalized afterwards. He recovered. Still, I felt no fear.
Last night was no exception. I was just beginning to drift off to sleep after reading in bed. It was around 2230hrs or so. The storm was picking up outside. I could see the lightning out of the corner of my eye. I could hear the thunder. It was getting closer. I wanted to close my eyes. I love sleeping during storms. They calm me. The wind and rain were beating against windows. Then, the storm got too close. I saw the flash even with my eyes closed. I heard the immediate boom. The security alarm sounded. It sounded like I was back in desert storm. There, the chemical alarms would sound waking us nearly every night. I know its been a long, long time, but I was braced for a scud attack. My heart was racing. My husband and I went downstairs to check the alarm. We could not get it to turn off. He temporarily unplugged the system. The phones were dead. Oh for a TA-312 when you need it. I smelled smoke. We eventually figured out that it was the phone with the answering machine. We had to take out the backup battery and bag it up. I felt my head spinning from the smell. We looked outside. The wind was howling. The rains were coming down the street like the waves on the beach. We checked the drains. I checked the tvs for news. Bad news. The tv wasn't working. We went back upstairs, armed with only a working flashlight. Nothing we could do tonight. I lay in bed, my heart still pounding. Could I rest, get maybe a few hours of sleep? I was in bed less than five minutes before I had to get up. The anxiety from the night affected me physically. Like right before every physical fitness test I ever had, I had to pee. Unfortunately, I had to pee every five to ten minutes for at least an hour. Before long, my body just gave out and I was asleep. Morning came too soon. Did I mention, my alarm clock? You 'll love this. We lost power. When we reset the switches, some things went haywire. My alarm clock for example, it didn't reset like the other clocks. It just died. I unplugged it and plugged it back in. It had been set for alarm but, instead played music when it was plugged back in. Nothing else worked. I couldn't even reset the time. What did it play? "Bad to the Bone"...
Even the coffee maker was acting up this morning, but I finally got that to work after playing with it a bit. Thank goodness. I was dressed in my workout clothes, but I honestly thought I'd have no opportunity to get in a workout today. While my husband was on the phone with the insurance folks, I did fifty push ups there in the living room. Then, while he finished getting ready for work, I called the AC repair folks. We've only had the AC a couple of months. We just replaced the whole system. When my husband went to work, I waited on the AC guy. While I was waiting on the cell call saying he was on the way sometime between then and noon (still no land line phone service), I went down and did five miles on the treadmill. I even had time to take a shower and have a whey protein smoothie before they called saying he was on the way.
He's here now. You know, its been a long night, but we are okay. To us old signal soldiers, it was just another "storm" we survived, but this time...no one was shooting at us.