My main memory of Hurricane Sandy is of being hounded from room to room by my family before finally taking up residence in the bathroom and living in the tub for about a week.
I remember trying to run outside before the storm made landfill proper and literally being blown back inside from the force of the wind. My mother came home with enough groceries to feed a small army and we all took showers, buckled down, and waited. We were lucky–we didn’t lose power–and I wasn’t terribly good at being afraid of the storm. I was more afraid of exacerbating my family’s already acute cabin fever. So I tried not to interact with them more than was necessary and curled up in the bathtub with a few of my favorite books and a healthy supply of flashlights, in case we lost power.
In retrospect, I’m quite grateful I didn’t have a smartphone or laptop back in eighth grade. Ignorance truly is bliss when knowing more only grants you a better understanding of your own helplessness. The landlines had to be kept open for emergencies as well, so there was no real way for me to find out how badly the storm was treating my friends.
After about a week, the storm abated and the schools reopened. Most of my friends hadn’t been hit as hard, and the ones who had lost power stayed at other friend’s houses till they were back on their feet. There were a few jokes about how it took a hurricane to finally clean up the Jersey Shore, and then life went on.
