One summer, my mother was mowing the lawn with an electric mower that was plugged into an outlet with a long, winding extension cord. It started pouring rain and she didn’t stop mowing, and I went outside and stood next to her literally screaming my eyes out over the claps of thunder because I was sure she was about to be electrocuted to death. (Which is a concern I would maintain today. Not the brightest idea on her part.) I was sobbing convulsively, convinced that if she weren’t electrocuted, she’d definitely be struck by lightning or swept up by a tornado that was obviously headed directly to our house. She finished the job, which I’m sure I made ten times more difficult by standing in her path, and somehow she was never electrocuted to death. But it remains possibly the most scared I’ve ever been.

There was one storm in particular, probably around 1998, that struck while we were at a public pool. And yes, before you judge us, we went to public pools. We didn’t get a fancy aboveground pool in our backyard until the 2000s, so we were forced to go swimming in public like animals. It was a balmy, cloudy day, but otherwise storm-less, and the entire family went. About halfway through the day, a lifeguard spotted lightning and made everybody get out of the water until the storm clouds passed over, which was perfectly fine, because it was lunchtime, and I was hungry.

While we sat unpeeling our peanut butter sandwiches from their damp plastic wraps, I looked up and saw a sinister cloud billowing toward us, a plume of green-gray smoke. I’d seen plenty of storm clouds before, but no cloud moved as menacingly as this one, like a thick snake uncoiling rapidly above us. Suddenly, the winds whipped violently around us, the rain came down like bullets, and everybody was running in a different direction. “This is the big one!” my mother screamed. A sign from the hot dog stand came loose and flew down and hit the person next to me in the head. I stood up, threw away my entire sandwich, and ran for the closest structure: the women’s bathroom. We all darted inside and clung to the concrete walls, which shook against the wind. I turned to find my older cousin sobbing uncontrollably with a hot dog in his hand. His body was convulsing, but he kept eating. It remains the most hilarious, yet terrifying moment of my childhood.

Eventually, the storm passed and we all survived. But a giant tree was literally ripped from its roots and thrown into the shallow end of the pool where we’d been swimming a half hour earlier.