Idalia

We moved to Florida when I was fifteen years old. I’ve always been the daydreamy, romantic type, so when the first hurricane was forecasted for our area, I was mostly intrigued, and when school was canceled, I felt downright excited.

One of my greatest and most terrible talents is my ability to outsleep everyone, but that night, waiting for the hurricane to arrive at our house, I stayed awake eagerly, listening for wind or rain, any sound of a hurricane sweeping in. Of course, due to being such an excellent sleeper, sleep came for me before the night got too late.

But I woke up the next morning, groggy as always, stumbled my way to the window, hoping to see some hurricane at last, and was faced with sunshine and blue skies.

It was terribly disappointing.

Of course, Hurricane Ivan came through a year or two later and pretty much killed any interest I may have had in hurricanes. Even MREs lose their magic after a while.

Nowadays, I’m always relieved when hurricanes go somewhere else. Very sorry for whomever they get, but at the end of the day, I’m glad it wasn’t me this time.

Also, when I was a teenager, freshly moved to Florida, my family had a boat. The boat was fun and speedy, but the most memorable time was when the boat began rapidly taking on water. We stopped at an island to troubleshoot it and as a big fan of Gulligan’s Island, Baby Island, Baby-Sitters’ Island Adventure (BSC Super Special #4) and Swiss Family Robinson, my hopes were way up there that this was the start of a grand island adventure for all of us, and maybe I wouldn’t have to go to school.

In case you couldn’t tell, I did not like going to school.

You see, for all their talk about wanting to get rescued and to get off the island, I believe the castaways on Gilligan’s Island were actually quite happy there. They were free from the pressures of everyday life. They enjoyed each other’s company. They had all the coconuts they could ever want. And the island was actually a beautiful, paradisical place to live. I feel like if they actually wanted to get back to their old lives, one of them would have killed Gilligan before the end of season one.

Sometimes, even now, I think that if I could end up on a tropical island with all my people and spend my days building things out of coconuts or designing cool treehouses or just hanging out around a campfire…it wouldn’t be too bad. It’d be a simple, but satisfying life. Unless a hurricane gets you, of course.

Anyway. Back to boating. It turned out the problem was something stupidly simple to fix, so we didn’t get to be castaways or miss school. Very disappointing.

Well, everyone stay safe out there and if you happen to need a book to read while Idalia makes her way across the land, I highly recommend Somewhat Alive, The Fiercest Chicken in the Bookstore, or Baby-Sitters’ Island Adventure (BSC Super Special #4), which totally still holds up after all this time.