You are reading my 1672nd column. That is, unless you quit reading right here and don’t get to the end. In which case, I’ll save you some time and give you the final sentence right now:
“Strawberries and empty bladders.”
You probably wonder how I’m going to work a ridiculous phrase like that into a column. Well, it looks like you’ll never know, will you? Because you’re in such a hurry, Mister Big Shot.
To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure if this day would ever come. Throughout the lifetime of this blog-column thingy, there were many moments when I wasn’t even sure I would survive the night.
Mainly, I am talking about hurricanes.
I live in Northwest Florida, where the Panhandle rubs Alabama’s underbelly. We get hurricanes upwards of four hundred times per year. Some of these storms are catastrophic (Opal, Ivan, and Michael). Some aren’t bad at all.
So you never know with hurricanes, that’s the scary thing about them. They can either kill you, or
they can cause mass confusion at Walmart while people stock up on milk and bread.
I don’t know why milk and bread are so important during deadly weather, but people go NUTS about it.
You cannot visit a store without seeing crazed citizens running around Piggly Wiggly pushing carts that are filled with stolen Colonial bread and 2% milk jugs. These people are often screaming passages from the book of Revelation aloud, and their children have Kool-Aid mustaches.
The reason I tell you about hurricanes is because I have done a lot of writing during actual hurricanes.
One time I wrote you during Hurricane Irma. I was in my garage with my wife and mother-in-law. We were all wearing bicycle helmets—my wife insists on wearing hurricane helmets.
At the time, my mother-in-law was asleep in the cot next to me with her…