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She sighed.
“Because we've
tested
them.”
“In a hurricane?”
She paused for a moment.
“In a
near
-hurricane,” she said. “And they did great. And if it had been a real hurricane
they would've done even better.”
“What's a near-hurricane like?” I asked.
“Windy. Very windy.”
I gave up. “Okay,” I said, “let's do it.”
She called me back the next day. The shutters were on back order for at least six weeks.
What a surprise.
“Why did we wait until hurricane season to order hurricane shutters?” I wailed to Mi-
chael that evening.
“The same reason we waited until last winter's blizzard to buy gloves. We're idiots.”
Though not particularly comforting, this shut me up.
☼ ☼ ☼
Over the next few weeks we logged many hours watching the Weather Channel. We be-
came intimately familiar with the speech patterns, verbal tics and wardrobes of the anchors
and reporters.
“Isn't Rob wearing a new jacket?” Michael asked one evening.
“Are you kidding? That old thing?”
Looking back, that moment should have given us pause, but by then we were in too
deep. In effect, we had gone over to The Dark Side.
“And what about Shelley's hair? Does that woman even own a brush?”
We pondered her unkempt hair in scornful silence. Then something on the screen be-
hind her caught Michael's eye.
“Hey look, there's a tiny storm brewing off the coast of Africa.”
“Is it headed west?” I asked, a tiny note of excitement cresting in my voice.
“Looks like it might.”
“I'll pop some corn.”
Michael settled in for the duration.
“While you're at it, could you make me a drink?”
☼ ☼ ☼
As fun as it was to sit around watching the Weather Channel all day, we were relieved when
the hurricane season ended that year.
Which, coincidentally, was almost exactly when our new storm panels arrived.
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