Five years ago today...

I've made a habit of writing about the tornado on the "anniversary" each year. I know we all have our locations from September 11, 2001 emblazoned on our memories (and will for life), and some of us who hang around this blog (Kat...Molly...Kirby...Mom) will have February 5, 2008 engraved in there for always, as well.

In past years, I've written about various memories I have from that evening...the bad, the worse, the good, the funny, the amazing. One day, I'll write out the entire story for posterity, but that would be completely too long to post here. With that in mind, and in the vein of last year's little memory, I'll leave you with another semi-funny little story:

The protocol for tornadoes at Union was (and is) to get into the bathrooms on the bottom floors of the dormitories. Because of the way the dorms were designed, you usually ended up with about 8 people in a bathroom (4 folks from the second floor room along with the 4 who live on the bottom floor). It's a great reason to keep your bathroom clean during tornado season. The night of our tornado (February 5, 2008), we were sort of taking our time getting in there; we were watching the news/gathering up cards to keep us entertained/getting snacks/rounding up pillows/fetching flashlights/putting on tennis shoes (cough...Kirby...cough)/etc. Thanks, Dan Satterfield and North Alabama, for prepping me well. 

Our R.A. came by to hurry us into the bathroom, just as our neighbor (not our upstairs neighbor, but our next door neighbor) came over to see if she could stay with us. We didn't know her; I think she was a freshman. Her roommates weren't at home, and she didn't want to be alone. That's fine. We get that storms are scary. Kirby's mom had just called from Memphis (an hour from Jackson, where the storm had moved through on its way to us) to let us know how bad it was there, so we were taking it seriously at this point.

Before we all crowded in the bathroom, though, Neighbor Girl (whose name I still don't know) wanted to use the bathroom. Fine. We get that, too. It's a necessary part of life. She went in and locked the door. I mean...no need to lock the door; we weren't planning on opening it or anything.

I say that we weren't planning on opening the door...but that changed a taddy bit while she was in there. All kinds of things started happening simultaneously in the couple of minutes or so that she was in there (with the door locked): the power went out, the infamous train noise roared through, and the window and front wall of our dorm room exploded. As soon as the lights went out, Amanda started banging on the door, yelling for Neighbor Girl to let us in (we could hear she was finishing up), but we didn't actually get in until the force of the wind blew the door open and threw us into a massive pile of girls in the tub. 

As dramatic as that part of the story sounds (and, it really was quite dramatic in real life, as well), we rolled our eyes for the next few months every time we recalled it because of how ridiculous it was that we almost didn't reach "shelter" because of a girl we didn't know who was supposed to be in her own bathroom and didn't trust us enough to leave the knob to OUR bathroom door unlocked. Freshmen. Sheesh. 

She earned herself the moniker, Bathroom Girl. From here until the end of time, that is what she shall remain.

In all seriousness, though: we are so grateful for God's hand of protection on a night that when the rescue workers arrived, they immediately called in for 200 body bags because they couldn't imagine needing fewer, based on the destruction they found. I'll never forget the images I saw that night and the stories that came out of our collective experience. We were so protected and so fortunate.

I will also never forget the girl who locked us out of our safe place. Gee whiz.

UPDATE: Molly filled me in on a piece of the puzzle that I didn't know. I was furthest away from the bathroom door when everything started happening, so I didn't realize that the door wasn't locked...Bathroom Girl was holding it closed! Molly told me that as the wall exploded, she (Molly) was saying, "Sorry if your pants aren't zipped" and pushing on the door. That makes the story THAT much funnier. And, it's a little bit true: zipped pants v. escaping tornado debris...escaping debris wins. Every time.