Sweet Downpour

I slept like a baby last night because the sky was going crazy. Ever since I was a little girl I have adored the monsoons. I'm sure if I lived in Florida I'd feel differently, but in Arizona they are a blessed relief from the holy hellah hot of the sun. And every monsoon season I'm reminded of the one storm that will forever live in infamy in my family. The one that should have scared us to death, but for some reason only succeeded in making us laugh hysterically....for years.
When I was about eleven there was a particularily intense storm raging in my hometown that ended up becoming the stuff of legend in my house at least. Two of my sisters and I were standing at the kitchen sink and looking out the window at the sheets of rain that dumped onto the earth one after the other with relentless carelessness. We watched tree limbs snap under the pressure and tumble to the ground only to be swept away by the current of the newly formed river in the street. My mother and two other sisters sat in the living room. She told us to get away from the window, but we were transfixed. Lightning flashed over us like it was keeping rythm to a punk rock song stuck in God's head. Not to be outdone, the thunder crashed almost simultaneously with each flash, and so it went on with the lightning and the thunder like two petulant children wrecking havoc in the sky to get a bit of attention. The kitchen sink that we stood over was made of stainless steel, and a few times ,when the lightning flashed, we hovered our fingers over it and watched the little blue sparks that jumped from the steel to our fingers with a tiny tingling buzz. Once it was strong enough to give us not only a buzz but a jolt. We stopped then, realizing it was a risk even if we weren't actually touching the steel.
Little did we know that our father was having his own viewing party in the back of the house. It was about twenty minutes later that he emerged from his bedroom, bathrobe swathed about him crookedly, hair standing on end, eyes bloodshot, and his breath wheezing and uncontrolled. He was a terrifyingly hysterical sight. "I .......co-ould.....hav-have......died-d." His teeth rattled as he spoke and he pointed a shaky finger at all of us accusingly. When we stared at him uncomprehendingly he said it again, this time a little more clearly, "I....could....have....DIED!" My mother, seeming to finally grasp the severity of the situation jumped up from the couch and grabbed his hand to lead him to a seat and recieved a healthy jolt through her hand for the effort. After about half an hour his breathing had regulated, the storm still raged and he was able to tell us what had happened. He'd been standing in the master bathroom getting ready to take a shower (idiot) and decided to watch the storm for a minute from the window, butt naked (idiot), with his hand resting on the metal towel rack (idiot). Well, he got transfixed just like we did and a few minutes later the flash that had jolted our fingers over the kitchen sink, had actually struck the telephone pole in the alley behind our house, the wire of which goes right over his bathroom. The lightning rod had split the telephone pole into a million splinters, traveled through the wires wich fell onto the roof of the house, where my dad caught the tail end of the current through his hand resting on the towel rack, and it laid him out cold. Unconscious, naked, electrocuted, helpless. He was right. He could have died. But he didn't. He came around, and tried screaming for help, since he was still paralyzed, but no one heard him, because not only was his voice barely a whisper, but the thunder still boomed over us. It took him about 15 minutes to regain the strength enough to come out and accuse us of leaving him to his death (idiot). Ah, I love my dad. And we will never let him forget that storm.