Chapter 32

Fortunately for us, the hurricane took another turn, slightly farther up the coast, sparing us the brunt of its damage. We were still lashed with high winds, but nothing catastrophic.

Miami was also spared much damage, and we returned to South Beach shortly after the storm had passed.

It’s a grim calculus with hurricanes, studying the radar, prognosticating about the cone of probability. Of course, you want it to pass you, your town, city. But when it does, and it goes farther south, north, east, west, then it smacks someone else. It’s like a hot potato, a live grenade, that moving mass of death, that mass of wind and chaos, that evil blob of swirling green and red and purple on the radar, lurking in every television. Major hurricanes in Miami get higher ratings than the Super Bowl.

There are two things fun about hurricanes, though.

The first is watching those idiot reporters on the street standing in the winds, hanging on to poles, being walloped by the high winds and rains. Nothing funnier and more enjoyable than that. Not that I don’t appreciate the media and the warnings, crucial info they provide about storms. If only those poor souls in Lake Okeechobee in 1928 had been warned.

Still, though, with what sanctimonious jerkoffs many news reporters are, what vultures, bloodthirsty vampires seeking ratings and sensationalism, it’s funny, in a gallows humor way, to see them suffer, stand outside, flailing like crash dummies in those storms...

Another thing enjoyable about hurricanes is getting off work or school. For what “snow days” are to the North, hurricane days can be for Florida, no work, no school.

Although it’s horrific if the hurricane really does hit you full force. Being out of power, water, eating canned food, the flooding of entire residential areas, and that’s assuming you’re lucky enough that the storm didn’t swallow your house in its gusty mouth of death.

Hurricanes absolutely suck.