My first line was that it was ironic that Adam chose storm stories and that was going to be my topic, but then I thought, how is that irony? It's blowing up a tsunami out there! No the true irony lies in my wearing white pants today.

But truth be told, I love storms. When I was little, my cousins and I would spend the summers at my grandparents house, and most of our days were spent at the barn with my Granddaddy while he made random repairs to farm equipment. My favorite days were the ones with afternoon showers. The rain would play out its rhythm on the tin roof and the temperature of the air would drop suddenly. My cousins and I piled in a hammock and if the wind was blowing just right, and mist would fall over us each time we'd swing to the right. Granddaddy would stop what he was doing and sit in a rusted out chair to watch. He said if God was going to put on a show he deserved an audience. When we were bored with the hammock, we'd dig our toes into the warm sand under the barn and look for discarded pea pods. We'd carefully place twig inside the pods crossways until we had constructed a small green armada to float in the streams and canals that were snaking their way into the supple sand beneath the barn.