I accidentally invented an Indian/Mexican fusion dish Friday night. I blame it on a mild case of weather-related panic.
As you’ll recall, when last we talked–well, I talked; you just read–it was Friday afternoon and we were under a Tornado Watch. I wasn’t really worried, despite the ominous sky and intense-looking line of storms the radar showed bearing down on us. Surely we weren’t in any real danger, right? So, I went about the normal routine: cooking dinner. I was making homemade taquitos, to take advantage of our new air fryer, and refried beans from scratch. We’re talking pinto beans soaked overnight, the whole nine yards. It’s a laborious and time-consuming dinner, one I hadn’t made in several years. No way was a little weather going to mess up my prep work!
Until our phones started blaring emergency alerts. The National Weather Service had upgraded the watch to a Tornado Warning. That was something I had never experienced before, so I was a wee bit flustered.
It’s kinda hard to focus on cooking when you’re afraid your newly purchased home could end up a pile of kindling, but the beans were at a critical juncture. I was at a point where I needed to add cumin, so I opened the spice cabinet, grabbed a bottle labeled CU blablahblah, added several liberal dashes to the beans…and immediately realized I’d just seasoned the beans with CURRY powder instead of CUMIN.
Oopsie.
Well, I couldn’t undo the deed, and I had bigger metaphorical fish to fry anyway. “You must be used to these warnings,” I said to Tara, who had lived in Kansas for a couple of years in the late ’90s. “What should we do?”
I was expecting sage advice along the lines of let’s hunker down in the below-ground plant room or we should drag a mattress downstairs and huddle beneath that. Instead I got, “You need to put your shoes on.”
Wait. What?!
“In case there’s debris you have to walk through,” she elaborated. “You don’t want to cut your feet.”
IN CASE THERE’S DEBRIS TO WALK THROUGH?! If that happens, a few scratches on my feet are going to be the least of my worries.
As if dealing with incorrectly seasoned refried beans and worrying about incoming tornadoes weren’t enough, I was also in the midst of a text conversation with my son Rusty, who is living his best life in New York City. I told him about the approaching tornadoes, and did my eldest child offer up sympathy for dear ol’ dad? No, he did not. Instead, he laughed.
Too much, he texted. You gave yourself away lol.
Wait a second. He didn’t believe me? But why not? I’d texted him the above screen shot and everything. Oh, but wait: it failed to send.
Should of eased into the ‘it’s headed right for us’ part, he continued. With all those tornados recently you almost had me for a sec. 😂
The kid’s dad is about to die and he throws in a laughing-face-with-tears-of-joy emoji?! Fine, I never got him that robot dinosaur he wanted for his 8th birthday, but that’s just a bit harsh. I kept insisting I was in very real peril, and finally he started to believe me.
Not an April Fools joke? he texted. You’re known for those April Fools pranks!
Haha! Well, shit. He’s not wrong. There was the fake Batman tramp stamp last year. And the phony three-day work suspension for surfing porn the year before. The pet armadillo on Instagram. No wonder he didn’t believe me! I’ve developed such a reputation for tomfoolery that, when I announced we were moving to Wisconsin last year, Writer of Words flat-out did not believe me. She assumed it was nothing more than an August Fools prank.
Classic case of the boy who cried wolf. And that, my friends, is why I didn’t even bother trying to fool y’all this year.
I make no such promises for 2024, though.
Luckily, we escaped the evening unscathed, though there were at least four confirmed tornadoes–including one that tracked from Stoughton to Cambridge in western Jefferson County, where we live. About 11 miles away, which is way too close for comfort. They were small and short-lived, but still.
After all the excitement had died down and we had eaten the taquitos (delicious!) and curry refried beans (edible!), I called my brother and sister-in-law for a chat. When I told him about the tornadoes, Scott said, “I hope you put your shoes on.”
And then, in one of the best-delivered callbacks of all time, he added, “Sock-sock-shoe-shoe, of course.” I’ll remember that next time. Next time, incidentally, might be Tuesday.
Happy fool-less April!
Mark My Words 
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