Tornados, tornados, tornados...

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes."

My middle son, Thing Two, (who just turned six this week) is obsessed with Tornados lately. Completely, utterly fixated with them. They had a Tornado Unit in school several weeks back, and Thing Two is convinced that a tornado is going to rip our house out of the ground and carry it away at any given moment.

He’s watched Wizard of Oz countless times, (in hindsight I should not have allowed this since it's contributed greatly to his paranoia) he begs me to show him the tornado parts of the movie “Twister” (I won’t show him the whole movie because of the language and the PG-13 rating) and he’s constantly pointing out dark clouds in the sky whether we’re outside, driving in the car, etc.. Here’s a typical conversation:

Thing Two: Mom?

Me: Yes Thing Two?

Thing Two: You see that cloud over there in the sky?

Me: (groans because we’ve had this conversation twice already today) Yes dear, I see that cloud.

Thing Two: Do you think it will turn into a tornado?

Me: No. Tornados are rare, you hardly get them here.

Thing Two: But my teacher said that whenever it rains and there are black clouds in the sky, you could get a tornado. What if a tornado came and got our house? Would we be ok? What if a tornado hit my school during recess? Do you think it would suck us all up…

Me: Sweetie, I don’t think she meant EVERY time there are black clouds in the sky…

Thing Two: But maybe this time we will get one. It could hit our house and we’d have to go to the basement and sit in the bathtub, because the bathroom has no windows. Do you think we’d die?

Me: (slightly exasperated) Honey, we aren’t going to get hit by a tornado.

Thing Two: Are you sure? Because my teacher said that when the clouds are black…

Me: THERE ARE NO TORNADOS IN WISCONSIN!!!

Thing Two: You said that yesterday, and I asked my teacher and she told me that there were tornados in Wisconsin and you were just joking.

Me: Aaaarrrggghhh!!

(Okay, I’m usually not this impatient with Thing Two, but we’ve had this exact conversation at least four times a day for the last few weeks.) It gets old after a while. He is completely neurotic about tornados now, and whenever they test the local tornado siren (every Saturday at noon) I have to reassure him that no, a tornado isn’t coming.

And of course he begs me to tell him about the time when I was caught in a tornado, I was working at Dillards in Sugarland Texas and a small one ripped one entire side off of the store, and the store was closed for a week after that. You should have seen the cosmetics department! Not a pretty sight.
We’ve had a lot of rain here lately, and a lot of dark clouds. So Thing Two is driving me up a tree with all this tornado talk. He always takes what they teach in school to heart so much.
I just got a note saying that they are about to start their “Child abuse and neglect” unit in school. I’m just waiting for the questions on THAT one…

Guess I can’t leave him in the car anymore when I run into the gas station…*wink*