I put this in here because, after I told my mom this story, she said I should put it on my blog. That's right - for those of you who had forgotten, my mom reads my blog. And she's still my mom. "You blog your mother with that mouth?" Apparently, yes - I do. Hi, Mom. (Typically, she doesn't comment - like the one Japanese reader I have who turned me on to Tomoyasu Hotei recently - I have these people who don't comment, have read since before the password protection went into effect, and are still with me. As much as I wish everyone would load up the comments field, I love all my readers like we were at Jonestown together. Let them hear it in the night!)
Three weeks (when you don't sleep much, time is meaningless, so everything over a few days ago happened "three weeks" ago if you ask me; from April Fool's to the signing of the Magna Carta - "oh yeah, like three weeks ago, wasn't it?") or so ago, I was on my way to run a morning errand on a Saturday. I had left my cell phone at work, and we needed milk, cheese and raisins (my wife is pregnant). It was raining, but not much. There were a lot of lightning strikes, though.
I was listening to Car Talk and passing a Nissan when lightning struck my car. "There wuz a bright light, then everything changed..." If you get the sense that I've been behaving differently since this, it's because it was actually aliens or the CIA. You might ask how I know I was struck by lightning (or rather, the car was struck - BIG goddamn difference, I suspect), and the answer is, I don't. Here's what I know;
There was a lightning storm happening at the time.
For a second, there was a blinding white flash (at like, 10AM) and I couldn't see.
My radio crapped out, and every light on the dash came on.
The hair on my arms and neck stood up.
Later, many of my car's fuses were burnt slightly, and had to be replaced.
When I looked around, everyone in the other cars was staring at me.
One guy mouthed, "lightning."
I wasn't blaspheming (specifically) at the time, and I wasn't asking for it, as far as I know. I'm going to take it as an omen, (since there were so many before moving here that I fucking well missed) and add it to my "this is why we need to move" list. I am wondering, though, if anyone knows the statistical likelihood of being at the center of a lightning strike while moving at roughly 50 to 60 mph.
Anyway, I promise not to get near your magnetic media or computers if I come visit you.