...Or nearly did so.
Let me set the scene:
Thunderclouds moved towards Mibicuri like a mass of heavenly
indigestion, obscuring the normally bright moon and stars. At about 10pm, the
edge of the storm reached my house and rain began to beat down on my tin roof
with a cacophony of sounds vaguely reminiscent of a middle school marching
band. My room was illuminated for brief moments by the lightning flickering
across the sky.
Miraculously, somewhere amongst the crashes of thunder and
bursts of light, I drifted off to sleep for a few brief hours until the eye of
the storm was overhead.
Around 3:00am the lightning and thunder that had been steadily
moving towards my little house was now all around me. I lay awake watching my
tin roof illuminate by flashes of light, when...
BLAM!
It was if the hammer of Thor had struck my roof. In what may
have been only a millisecond, my entire room was lit to the brightness of day.
Lightning ripped through my house, frying the electrical
wiring, and my nerves. I was
completely and irrevocably awake.
As the storm continued to unleash itself overhead I cowered
in my bed with wild, random thoughts running through my mind.
“Was a foam mattress a conduit for electricity?”
“Is my computer charger fried?”
“Can lightning restart my heart?”
“Is there anything that will spoil in my fridge?”
As the storm showed no sign of abating, and sleep alluded
me, I moved on from electrically themed contemplations to more random trains of
thought, which included:
“If I had a billion dollars, I’d buy a motor home and cruise
across the U.S.”
“I did a really crappy job
building my mousetrap propelled car in 12th grade physics.”
“If I ever get to visit home,
I want to eat beer and bacon for every meal. Oh and butter. Yeah, butter”
I kept up with these wild, seemingly nonsensical musings in
order to escape one nagging reality...
I had to pee. Really bad. And my toilet was outside. And it had a
tin roof.
I considered a variety of options, which included making an
impromptu “tinny,” or pulling an Amy Phoeler in Baby Momma and peeing in the
sink. Instead I opted for the suffer in silence, text my sister, and play
Tetris on my phone option.
Every time I’d convince myself that the storm had passed,
I’d hear a rumble and see a flash that dissolved any resolve I had for making a
mad dash outside.
So there I lay. Bright eyed and bushy tailed. No really. If
I were a cat, my tail would resemble a pipe cleaner. My hair was literally, and
figuratively, on end.
Hours later, after the eye of the storm moved on to other
parts of Guyana, I could still feel the wrath of Thor echoing in my chest
cavity.
And I still had to pee.
