Not That Sane. V Lakshman. Every Wednesday.

Okay! I'm sorry (May 13, 1999)

I suppose an apology is in order. It's been a while and it certainly hasn't been every Wednesday. I can offer excuses galore. Such as that the Ph.D. qualifier got the better of me (I passed by the way, thank you), that I ran out of opinions to inflict, that I caught the boredom of the plains or that ever since I gotten married, I've gotten smug and lazy and have lost my muse. Incidentally, those were all excuses that regular readers (viewers like you, as the PBS slogan puts it) gave on my behalf. What can I say? I'm sorry, dear reader. I'll try to get things put up on time from now on.

I was talking to a friend the other day when the topic of the tornadoes that hit central Oklahoma came up. These days, that topic always comes up. "It seems," she opined, "they are going to call it a F6".

I'm a klutz. I should admit this before I proceed further. She was part of a congregation, many of whose members live in the neighborhood that got razed. This was obviously one of those survival things. This was probably a way to convince themselves that what hit us here was completely out of the blue and something totally unique.

Anyway, as I said, I'm a klutz, a dolthead. "Well," I said, "F5's go all the way to 350mph, and this one, according to most reports, was barely a F5. It went over 300mph only a small part of the track" She looked at me with pain written all over her. "Really?," she asked. And the dolt I am, I continued, "Yes, if this had happened in open country, no one would have noticed, just that it went through an inhabited area." And then, realizing what I had done. I got out of there as soon as possible.

For the record, the tornado reached speeds of 318mph. Its highest rating was a F5. And it was a monster.


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