Donuts in the Dark

Sandy struck on Monday night. A hurricane?  In Cleveland?  Yep.  I'm pretty sure I never thought I'd utter those words...

My first encounter with a true "natural disaster" was back in 2003.  I had just moved from Cleveland to Kansas City with my first position at Sherwin-Williams.  The job required a lot of travel, as my territory stretched from the middle of Missouri to the middle of Kansas.  If you know me, you know I have a pitiful sense of direction, and remember this was at the dawn of cell phones...GPS was not even on the radar yet. You looked at actual maps back then... Crazy, right?

 

One Sunday evening in April, I was driving to Columbia, Missouri - about three or four hours from my apartment.  As I drove through literally the middle of nowhere, the tornado warnings started blaring over the radio.  The panicked radio announcers starting spewing out a list of counties, which I'd never heard of. I didn't know if I was driving into a black funnel cloud, so I kept watching for cows flying through the air, but I was in the clear. Turns out the warmings were for Kansas, and I was driving in the opposite direction in Missouri. When I returned back to Kansas City I bought an Atlas. (I wonder if they even make those anymore?)

Back to Sandy...

We lost power around 10pm on Monday night, long after the boys went to bed.  Neither one stirred as the wind whipped against the house, and branches came crashing down around us. It was unrelenting.  Conversely, I lay in bed wide awake, all night - in fear a tree would crush us at any minute, planning our escape route, and mentally going through a list of tree services and landscapers we'd certainly need in the morning. 

 

Morning came, and the house was still standing, the basement was dry, yet the power remained off. As I worried about how to keep the milk cold, putting makeup on in the dark, and where we'd sleep that night, Colin stumbled downstairs.  He immediately zoned in on the flashlight I was using to survey the scene, and yelped in excitement!  "The suuuuuun" he cried. 

 

Nothing could be further front he truth. 

 

But, you have to appreciate the thought. 

 

He immediately ran over to the light switch and turned it on.  Nothing.  Not phased, his 15 second attention span quickly shifted to the box of Dunkin Donuts on the kitchen table.  Donuts?  Flashlights?  What could be better? For a 2 and a half year old, not much.  Maybe a hot shower, electricity? Nah!  Who needs that?

It turns out, we were pretty lucky.  By the time we got home from work, full power was restored, and our house was a toasty 72 degrees again.  Every tree in our yard stayed securely in the ground - even the half dead pine trees that we've already talked about taking down next summer.  And other than some cheese and lunch meat in the fridge, we were spared any major loss.

 

The next morning when Colin came downstairs for breakfast he promptly turned off the lights in the kitchen, grabbed the flashlight that was still on the table and said, "donuts, pleeeeease!"