Clanging bells meant the tornado was imminent. This was no drill. Drills are scheduled; this was a complete surprise which turned into shock and fear. The adults complied with usual tornado drill procedures and shepherded their classes into the farthest corner from the row of room windows. The darling children tucked head under hands and like large multicolored sardines; they were packed tight together. Some children whimpered in fear. Children knew this was true alarm.
It wasn’t a wind but a dust cloud swirling and getting closer and closer to my school room. The windows blew in! Yikes…I and the adjoining teacher grabbed as many as my kids that fell and frantically hauled them into the safer room. Those that could, crawled beneath the tables and through chairs and then took off running outside to the other side of the building.
The door blew in. That door was locked! What bolt of dust could push a door that hard?! Then the wind whipped up sound like metal nervously dancing on the pavement…a tac tac tikkeity tack…..and then clank!
“Whhhhheeeerrrrreeee’s my lunch box?” came the gruff voice near the broken windows and blow-in door. It said it again at a higher pitch “wheeeeeerrrreee’s my lunch box?” The third time, it was positively screaming “WHEEEEERREE’S MY LUNCH BOX?!!!!” It was a demand…but from dusty winds?!
I had to peek through the adjoining door’s meshed glass center. Holy Broom Stick! It was a wild looking woman with long light brown hair raised high by the winds…her top shirt was long and the ends still whipping upwards with every scream for her lunch box. Long legs and in her hand, she held a broom. This broom was crooked at the three-quarter mark like a square or rectangle. I don’t suppose brooms grow that way but perhaps she had wicked spells that twisted tree limbs. Attached to it were metal prongs that looked like bungee ends.
She saw me. I froze behind the door. She bellowed again…”Where’s my lunchbox”? and the adjoining door also burst inward exposing my position.
Glaring at me with glassy eyes, she coldly demanded everyone’s lunch and one special lunchbox…mine…because mine had a cooler and it had a square bottom …or else she’d blow apart the school.
I gave up my garlic roasted chicken, Johnny’s peanut butter sandwich, Mrs. Taier’s ham sandwich with cheese, Avery’s lunchables, all the cut up apple bites, some chicken fingers and whatever else the rest of the kids in my class had. All this food somehow packed neatly into my medium sized cooler lunchbox.
She gruffed outside with my lunchbox, carefully fitting it neatly into the square of her crooked broomstick and wrapped the bungee cords around it. Broomstick pointed up and off she went.
This incident occurred 5 years ago. The wild woman never returned again.
So I figured that if we only lost our lunch, we did well.