Tilapia Were Falling From The Sky

I guess hurricane season has become like baseball season—pretty much all but one month a year. But anyway, last Friday I was thinking about anything but hurricanes. The first I heard of Hurricane Sandy was from a guy on the subway who was selling candy and generally raving about a wide variety of subject matter. As much as I tried to ignore him, and read, when he mentioned "Miss Sandy" and how we should stay home next Monday, when I got back to the office I looked at the crystal ball and sure enough, there She was, coming our way. It's not like I never check the weather, but the weather websites usually have so many ads on them it's worse than watching college football on TV. The ads usually jump off the screen and try to disembowel you with dripping fangs, or even worse, you get the spinning rainbow ball and have to force quit. I just can't tolerate that much pain.

There have been long stretches in my life when I had no TV at all, and only recently have I had the internet at home. My phone already wakes me up in the morning and goes with me everywhere but the bathroom, so I don't want to ask it to give me weather updates. So... I very easily could have gotten up this morning and headed off too work, thinking, wow, a lot of wind, I wonder if a snowstorm is coming like last Halloween? I went out for a walk a few hours ago and it was no worse than that, at this point. One of the subway entrances had the measly orange tape (that indicates it's closed) removed, so I could have easily bustled down the steps with my lunch pail and my work attitude, resigned to spend the next nine hours in someone else's garden. At which time I would have been devoured by rats, since, as everyone knows, the only thing that keeps the underground rodent population at bay are the rats of the human variety. As they sucked out my eyeballs and gnawed on my liver, the last thing running through my mind would have been that guy selling candy, "Watch out for Miss. Sandy!"—and me thinking: I thought Sandy was a man.