A couple of weeks ago I was talking to my sister on the phone when my evening was interrupted by a rather familiar sound; the tornado siren. Which naturally prompted me to tell my sister that I had to go, grabbing my bag and shoes, and running barefoot down the stairs to the basement of my building. As some of you are aware I live on the 11th floor of a high rise in the Twin Cities, which means yes I did run down 11 flights of stairs barefoot.
This event brought back one of my memories from when I was in college back in Southern Missouri; which is not per say in tornado alley but is rather close to it.
It was my final year of my undergrad and I was teaching dance at a studio in the evenings about 20 to 25 minutes away from campus. Naturally the studio had massive floor to ceiling mirrors in the rooms and was also in a shopping center.
I was teaching my final class of the evening, intermediate Broadway Jazz, when suddenly the tornado sirens went off and the few people that were still there all had to go into the back of the building were the office was, because even though it was not in the middle of the building it was the only room without a window or a massive mirror in it.
After a little bit the siren had stopped in that area, however, the warning was still out and there was a confirmed tornado in the area headed north of town closer to where I lived. Everyone else at the studio lived only a few minutes away and decided to use this opportunity to get home quickly. I choose to take my chances in my car over risking the tornado coming back towards the studio with both me and the massive mirrors in it.
It was one of the longest drives I ever had between my school apartment and that dance studio. There was extremely heavy rain going on while the wind from the storm blew it sideways and I could barely see out of the windshield. Needless to say I immediately regretted my choice to leave the studio.
Just as I was rounding the corner of my street it was starting to let up a bit and I was asking myself why in the world had I decided to do something to stupid and that’s when I saw it. The bright shining moment that made me feel a little bit less dumb.
There in the middle of the flooded street was one of my classmates, who was a theater major, who was outside tap dancing in the middle of the street during the storm. Because as he explained the next day when else was he going to be able to do a rendition of Gene Kelly’s 1952 dance Singing in the Rain.
