Stuck In A Storm

It was a fairly hot afternoon in July of 2019, just a couple days after my birthday actually. My sisters were in town so we wanted to have a family day on the water. I was the last one to get ready because I’m not a morning person so I took my time. I threw my bathing suit and a pair of shorts on and put my hair in a braid and went upstairs to help my mom pack the cooler. It was supposed to be a relaxing day on the boat with plenty of pasta salad and lemonade to keep me happy. I grabbed a towel and my birks and walked down to the boat. First of all, I have a big family and I don’t really like my step sisters, but I had to put my big girl pants on and try to have a good day.

When we got out of the cove there was about forty boats out on the lake, it was so busy. We drove around for a little bit and got hot so we stopped and jumped into the water. I laid on the front of the boat most of the time to tan, mostly because I did not want to deal with my sisters. It was so relaxing and so hot. If you think this story is going to end well, you are wrong. The only good thing I got out of this day was a nice tan. We went to the other side of the lake to go on the rope swing for a good hour. We also went to the sand bar because everyone was there listening to music and having fun. We met with some family friends there and my cousin found me after a good twenty minutes. I was so happy to see her because that meant I did not have to hangout with my sisters. We had a great time at the sandbar and ate plenty of food, but it ended sooner than expected.

We were at the sandbar for about 3 hours before a storm started rolling in out of nowhere, literally nowhere. At first, it was not that bad, it was just a little dark so not many people left the sand bar. Not long after, it started down pouring, and I mean hard. The sky was dark grey, no blue in sight and the raindrops were so hard it felt like hail. Oh, but don’t worry, it did start hailing, so bad I though it was going to leave a mark on my body. Everyone and their friends got in their boats and started taking off. The rough part of this story was that there were so many boats at the sand bar that it was going to take a year to get out of there. It started thundering and with thunder comes lightning. My parents wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, but we were getting trapped behind other boats. It was like New York City of the lake. It got so bad that my dog was taking shelter under the tube that was probably going to pop from the hail hitting it so hard. The day was going so good, none of us expected a huge storm to hit us out of nowhere.

My story reminds me of the movie, “Into the Storm” because in that movie people are trying to escape the storm by running from it. They run into a ton of traffic like we did on the lake and the storm hits them. There is nothing they could have done to avoid it but they were scared. Just like them, my family and everyone on the lake was scared. Trying to race back to their docks before they got hit by lightning. I was mad that we were not informed of the storm before hand, but I guess no one got the memo. My main takeaway from the experience was to expect the unexpected even if you have your doubts. You should always be prepared just incase you get hit with a storm. This is metaphorical as well so a storm could mean a large test, a speeding ticket or a team that is surprisingly beating your butt. Anything can happen it is how you take precaution and deal with it that matters.

Photo by MiquelGP54 on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND