You may recall that I started this blog last year with a story about my first day of college when I threw up in front of a table full of girls. Now, let me share a story from my second week of college when an 800-pound air conditioner almost fell on my head.
The week I arrived at college in Pensacola, Florida, there was scuttlebutt about a hurricane in the Caribbean. And by “scuttlebutt,” I mean my mom calling me every day.
“You’ve heard about the hurricane?”
“Yes. Yesterday. From you.”
“Grandma says it’s supposed to be bad.”
“I think it’ll be fine.”
“She said you could go to Aunt Mamie Lee’s.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“At least buy batteries!”
“I don’t even think I have anything that uses batteries.”
“Don’t be stubborn. Buy the batteries.”
Throughout the week, people got more and more panicky about the potential hurricane. “Maybe we should buy batteries!” they started saying. The school, in turn, got more and more panicky about too many people getting panicky.
“Everything’s fine!” they would say. “This happens all the time! Look, this weather map doesn’t show the hurricane landing anywhere near here. Knowing hurricanes, it’ll probably go into the Atlantic and hit Canada instead! Hahaha! It’s a good thing you go to school in Florida and not Canada! Hahaha!”
I believed them, but I was hoping so, so much that the hurricane would smash into the campus. It was like hoping for blizzards as a kid – who cares if a giant storm causes millions in damage and ruins people’s lives – all it means for you is a snow day!
The day before Hurricane Ivan, the school had a message for us – Whoops! Never mind. It’s coming directly for us after all.
Whoops! Never mind. It’s coming directly for us after all.
I went to the store to buy batteries.
They were, of course, all out of batteries. And flashlights. And snacks and anything remotely useful in a hurricane. I felt like I had to buy something, so I purchased a John Grisham paperback. (I forget exactly which book, but I’m guessing it’s the one where a spunky young lawyer takes on evil in a small Southern town only to discover that he is in way over his head.)
On the morning of the hurricane, the school assigned each dorm a safe place to wait out the storm. My dorm got the field house. Considering that the alternatives included a lecture hall and the 3-foot-wide dorm hallway, we had won the lottery.
While the storm picked up around us, we lived up our Hurricane Day by playing basketball, wrestling each other and sweating buckets, blissfully unaware that hurricanes routinely knock out the plumbing necessary for showers. At the end of the day, everyone laid claim to a bed. Of course, the wrestling room was the most coveted spot (mats on the floor), but as a freshman, I ended up settling for a treadmill.
I took out my contacts and was just starting to figure out that a treadmill actually doesn’t make a very comfortable bed when I head a huge noise from the gym. In an instant, the field house turned into the D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan.
People started sprinting in circles. They were yelling that the roof had caved in. An AC unit on top of the building had fallen through and may or may not have squashed a guy! (It hadn’t). Without my contacts in, I squinted to see which way the blobs were pointing while they were screaming “Go! Go! Go!” I fumbled for my pillow, sheets, glasses and John Grisham book (I was probably at the part where the young hero learns the conspiracy goes much deeper than he imagined.)
I followed the stampede through the dark hallways of the attached Academic Center with sirens blaring and emergency lights flashing. After a few minutes, we ended up in a library study room. The study room had a giant window, which seems like a bad feature for both a room that’s supposed to encourage concentration on studying and a hurricane shelter. We all stood by the window to check out the destruction outside.
“Get away from the window!” someone shouted.
We all took a step back.
“At least 10 feet! No 15! 20!”
They probably didn’t get to hurricane safety specifics in the first week of security guard training.
I made a bed on the ground and fell asleep after a half hour of watching a palm tree blow back and forth, back and forth, baaaaack and forth, baaaaaaaack and…no more palm tree. I remember thinking that we definitely wouldn’t have school the next day.
I woke up an hour later to D-Day II. Apparently a window in the next room had blown in. We did the panicked evacuation drill again and ended up in a pitch black admissions office. Because I had neither flashlight nor batteries, I curled up in a spot that felt empty and fell asleep.
I woke up several hours later with my face inches from some guy’s foot. I looked around to see that we’d somehow packed 100 guys into a room that could comfortably seat 20.
Guys started waking up and walking outside the room to investigate. Somebody came back with great news – the storm had passed! It’s sunny outside! We made it!
Our celebration was interrupted by someone else coming back with a little worse news. The toilets aren’t flushing. Also, don’t go into the bathroom, because the toilets have already been filled to the brim and maybe a little more.
That’s also when I realized that I was sitting in a cloud of body odor. I could have really gone for some air conditioning right then. Or at least a mini fan. With batteries.
NEXT WEEK: Escape to Aunt Mamie Lee’s.
LIFE LESSON #85
Hurricane Day is a little worse than Snow Day.