Who's Afraid of Thunder?

When I was a kid growing up in South Florida I had a drum. It didn't last a really long time because in some weird fit of neurotic frenzied need to please the jerk off neighbor kids, I bashed it in. That one incident is but a small window into my adult psyche, but THAT is for another blog (and perhaps another life). Frankly, I've spent enough money and spent enough time in therapist's offices to buy the damn factory that made that drum; it's time to let it go, or if not let it go, at least make a comedy career out of it.

However... and this is really the point of this post... the thing that I remember most about that drum is that I always played it with a song I had on record. A song about thunder, one of a series of science records that came out in the late 50s or early 60s and which, as a South Florida kid and the son of a scientist, I was pretty much set up for by birthright. I played that song when it thundered and it thundered a lot, so my poor mother probably heard the song (and my creative accompaniment) more loudly and more often than anything I played until I was a disaffected high school know it all with an obsession for dark John Lennon songs. THAT is when I really drove my mother crazy! As I listen to some of those songs now, I really have to admire the astonishing patience of my maternal parent for not just blasting into my room like some suburban Kali and taking me out of her misery with one swift swipe of her bloody sword and then dancing on my broken body in triumphant celebration.

But I digress.

I loved that drum. I loved the song I played it with and I loved the reason for the song.

THUNDER!!!

In 28 years of living in Northern California I can count on my fingers (with room to spare) how many times we had a real thunder storm and it wouldn't take more than one foot to add the times I heard real thunder blasting and crackling through the sky. In the 10 days I've been in New Orleans I've heard more thunder - big, loud, wonderful thunder - than in all that time in California.

No matter where I am or what I'm doing, every single time I hear the thunder crack and boom I'm instantly transported back to my room in Lake Worth Florida where I'm banging on my little Tin Drum, ready to take on the universe... and playing that stupid song.