Rabbit is good, Rabbit is wise

Picture this. It's 1996 and I'm sixteen years old. My family and I are in the darkened movie theater, sitting back and sipping frozen Cokes when the lights dim further and the film rolls. I had no idea I was going to see something that would change my young and mushy brain. I just thought it was a cool night out at the movies with my family.

A few minutes into the film, a wide shot slides in with a crop-dusting bi-plane zooming low over the crops and a red Dodge Ram drives through the country side to a musical score that still gives me goosebumps. I remember, clear as a bell, my exact reaction. "Whoaaaa" whispered and barely heard.

The movie was the film Twister, released in 1996 starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. It would become my obsession until I graduated high school.

I took meteorology classes, set up an official NOAA weather monitoring system in our backyard with my dad, and often went to Radio Shack to oogle the walkie talkies and other neat gear I supposed we would need.

It was my solid plan to head out west with my sister and become a storm chaser. We were going to be the financially broke but happily fulfilled team in our hodge-podge of vehicles chasing tornadoes to a rock and roll soundtrack. We'd even have a red Dodge Ram.

I learned a lot during my obsessed time. The differences between tornadoes and macrobursts, the Fujita scale and what a "bow echo" means. Jen and I even got really good at gauging when a storm would hit, how bad it would be, and how long it would last just by spending so much time studying them and staring wide eyed through the window at the lightning flashes.

We would blare the Twister soundtrack, had all of the lines memorized and for a while really believed we would go out and change the face of tornadoes and what we know about them.

Life intervened of course. A friend who saw that I was letting go of my dream pressed a Twister Pet Tornado in my hand to convince me that I shouldn't settle for a mundane life when I could chase dreams. I still have it, a clear plastic tube filled with water and glitter. When you spin it, it causes a vortex to form, like a tornado.

I wish I'd kept the dream instead, but I can't say I'm unhappy with my life. If I had gone down that path, I wouldn't be who I am, where I am and what I am today. I would be some other Julie. Some crazy, psychotic Julie with windblown hair and batshit crazy eyes screaming "It's the finger of God!!!"

Come to think of it.. that isn't too far off from where I am now..