that's mrs. mediocrity to you

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Describe a memorable experience that took place
while preparing or eating food.

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It was one of those crazy humid hot summer days in late July or early August. One of those days when the air just hangs on your skin like an extra set of clothing. By early evening, my family had gathered on the front porch because it was just too hot to be inside, and rain was on the horizon. My cousin, who was a year or two older than I, was staying at my grandmother’s house, just kitty-corner across the street. He had come over to spend the day hanging out with my brother, probably playing G.I. Joe or War or some such thing that the boys were always playing back then.

I’m sure that we were all drinking Pepsi, because that’s what we drank every night back then, one of us would walk around the block to the corner store and buy the eight pack of tall returnable glass bottles. And then most nights, to go along with it, there was either popcorn or some sort of candy. On this night, it was M&Ms, the biggest bag you could buy, divvied up between the five of us. (Me, my three siblings and my cousin). We held them in coffee cups, because you know, you always had to be certain that no one got more than their fair share.

I don’t think my dad was home that night, he worked trick shifts, so his scheduled rotated every week, one week 7-3, one week 3-11, one week 11-7. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to adjust to that change every single week. No wonder he was always falling asleep at the kitchen table…but that’s another story.

I remember little else about the evening until it happened. The wind picked up, there was thunder and lightning, and we sat there on the porch enjoying the show and the cooling temperatures. And then the rain came, and the wind picked up even more, and my cousin started to get scared and wanting to go back home to my grandmother’s house. We told him to stay put, and I don’t really remember why he felt the overpowering need to leave just then, but I do remember that he grabbed his M&Ms and hopped on his bike to scoot across the street at almost the exact moment that what I can only describe as a mini tornado came zooming down the street. I’m sure there is a technical name for such a thing, a whirlwind or dust devil, it wasn’t very tall, maybe eight or ten feet, but it looked exactly like a tornado funnel. And even though it was small, it was powerful.

I had never seen anything like it before that night, and I have never seen anything like it since. We generally don’t have tornadoes here in western New York. It traveled straight down the center of the street, and you could see leaves and branches and debris swirling around in its path. My cousin zoomed across just in time to avoid it and the giant chestnut tree that came crashing down right behind him, blocking my grandmother’s car in her driveway, but somehow managing to avoid doing any real damage to it, or to my cousin.

He made it onto her porch and looked back over at us and we looked back over at him and I’m certain that we all had the same mouth-wide-open, holy crap! stare on our faces.

He was okay, and the tree, though a major inconvenience, hadn’t actually destroyed anything. But his M&Ms were gone, and so was the cup. We all searched for it the next day and never found so much as a shard.

Apparently, along with her temper, Mother Nature has a sweet tooth.

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this post is part of the scintilla project. see more here.