Panic Wave

Panic Wave: noun. A particular type of panic that gets worse and worse as the minutes tick by, whether by new information or simply an increase in awareness or emotion.

It started off as a good morning. We were going to have fried polenta with syrup for breakfast, which is a rare treat. I started the prep and Husband went off to work. Now, he likes to listen to his scanner (a habit I hate), and about two minutes later, he opened the door again and announced that a school bus had been hit by a train, three students killed, three cars derailed, and they can't find the driver of the school bus. *Feeling a little panicked? Keep reading. It ends well.* Husband left again, and I went into the next room to say a quick prayer for the families of the children who died and those who may be injured.

Husband came back a few moments later. This time he said the bus wasn't hit by a train, but the train exploded, and the explosion hit the bus. Oh, yeah, that's so much better. [Note my sarcasm.] I became nasueous, so I decided to forget the polenta and just give the kids cereal and skip breakfast myself.

Well, we were thinking about the possibility of evacuating. Husband had already decided he wasn't going to work until he knew whether or not we had to leave our home. Who knows what was on the train, so I decided to be ready in case we had to leave. As I was working on it, Husband heard over the scanner that there was a plume of smoke that was drifting, and there was going to have to be evacuations. Fortunately, not for us. It was blowing the other direction. Husband, ever the curious one, decided to climb up on our (low) roof to see this smoke. A minute later he came back down, in a much less panicked mood.

"It's a drill!" he said. "There's no smoke."

"And is no smoke why you think it's a drill?" I asked. Just the fact that he can't see it doesn't comfort me.

"No," he said. "Apparently people have been calling and they announced it!"

Well, that was fun. And I went to go make the polenta.