Get the flashlight. I feel a drizzle.

Storms are sweeping across the South this week. I can bet you that the majority of the folks affected are either glued to their television screens or listening to weather radios. It's just what we do. Most of us in the Deep South don't see snow, much less blizzards. But we do take a tornado, hurricane or even a severe thunderstorm very seriously. Rightly so, considering the damage they cause.

At any given time during the day, you could walk in my grandmother's living room and find her television on. It was playing one of two channels- CMT or The Weather Channel. That's it. So, you either had to absolutely love Garth Brooks or Jim Cantore.

If I called Granny or Papa they would always tell me the weather at their house. Then they would ask me the weather at my house. It didn't really matter where I was living- across the country in the southwestern United States or just a 45 minute drive away. This information was vitally important to the conversation.

Growing up, I can remember little rules of the weather- "Get off the phone when it is lightning. Don't stand too close to a window. Get out of the bathtub, Melanie. I think I hear thunder."

I remember our school going through tornado drills. One afternoon a tornado touched down nearby.

I was actually a little excited about it. "Cool. A real tornado. We don't have to curl up in a ball on our knees and just pretend."

Hey! I was a naive little kid. I had no idea what those storms could really do. My only exposure to twisters involved a tin man and a cute little dog.

With all of this serious weather hypersensitivity, it stands to reason why my own mama would react the way she did one day last year on a "severe weather conditions" evening.

Severe thunderstorms were threatening the area. Mama and Daddy had been watching the weather all evening. (Surprised?) Let me repeat that- the weather was threatening the area. It had not actually arrived to the area to follow through on the threat. Which makes me wonder: Does the storm send a note to the weatherman outlining the threat with some demands or does it just call him and hang up the phone?

I digress in a post, yet again.

So, there was Daddy watching Wheel of Fortune in his recliner, with the severe weather banner running across the bottom of the screen.

While Mama was seeking shelter in the safest part of the house.

Mama has arthritic knees (hence my daughter's comment on "the poopy walk"). So, being the resourceful person she is, Mama got a dining room chair to sit in while she waited for the impending storm that had not arrived. She pulled the chair in the hallway, away from all doors and windows.

Daddy was still in the recliner watching television. Ya know, because the power and the cable were still on.

Then Mama went in her room and put on some decent clothes, "because a woman does not want to go through a tornado or a bad storm and end up on Channel 10 News in some old house clothes." (Her words, not mine.) Then she put on a little make-up, the really crucial items, blush and lipstick. Mama made sure she was wearing her wedding rings, and then she sat in the chair in the hallway and waited.

While Daddy watched Pat Sajak.

Then Mama realized she had forgotten something. She hopped up and went back in her room to find it. Once she found it, she got back in her chair in the hallway and sat it on her lap, clutching it to her chest, the most important possession for every Southern woman- her purse.

And she waited. And waited. And waited.

And nothing happened.

While Daddy watched Millionaire.

And that, my friends, was the night that the lights almost went out in Georgia.