Last night Keith and I sat cuddled under a blanket (we're having our first cold spell and it turns out our furnace is kaput) and watched the news coverage as Superstorm Sandy ravaged New York City and the Atlantic states. Given our experiences in the many storms that have hit so hard down here over the last several years, we of course felt this profound sense of connection, of shared vulnerability, of our common humanity, with our East Coast brothers and sisters.
Well, not really.
I mean, we're not totally terrible people. We thought with concern about our friends in New Jersey and in D.C. and we don't wish pain on anyone. But I have to admit that as we watched the coverage, we did behave rather like high school seniors who smirk and snicker at the freshmen who can't open their lockers and get lost on their way to P.E. When the anchorman reported with horror that three feet of water had flooded the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and then added with a gasp, "And it's a wooden floor! In an historic building!", we burst out laughing. Water on wood floors in historic buildings--not quite gasp-worthy in southern Louisiana.
Yes, we're being pitifully petty. Because it's not just that we're the hurricane seniors smiling at the antics of the storm freshmen. It's that hurricanes are our thing, you know? We don't have much. We don't have Broadway or Central Park or good public transit or riotously colored autumn leaves or great Ecuadorian and Ethiopian food or mile-high buildings or a sandy shore or great museums or some of the best universities in the world. We're not a swing state. We're not an economic incubator or a transportation corridor and we don't have a high tech valley or triangle or hub. So forgive us if we feel a bit proprietorial about hurricanes. A deprived people can become a bit deranged.
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