Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Hailstorm

The power shook and flared, intermittently lighting the house with the strobe light of a decaying disco. Dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets in the air fryer saw their heat blocked as by the clouds of a fickle god. Dogs murmured nervously in their cages, seeing the problem, but not its source, knowing that they should be afraid, but also delighting in the novelty. 

I knew what I had to do, what I should have done before the hail and the wind and the rain. The tree out front had finally lost its rotten Pinocchio nose. A bloom up top for the hair, two perfectly circular woodpecker holes a little ways down for the eyes, a jagged knot for the mouth, and in the middle, the jutting oaken nose of a liar. Was my wife always right? No. Was it embarrassing to be sent into the hail, my tail between my legs, to fix a problem she had helpfully pointed out hundreds of times over the course of many years? No comment. 

A jacket would be recommended in such a situation, but all of my jackets were designed for winter, made of heavy cloth that would soak in the rain faster than my great aunt sucks in a bottomless brunch-time mimosa. My hats were all of the fitted wool baseball variety and didn’t deserve the indignity of the stink they would form in the wetness. I walked outside as I was, raw-dogging the storm in my Amazon-branded hunter green shorts and my dumpster-fire shirt. Everything was fine, indeed, wise-ass shirt. 

Misted rain reached me even on the covered porch, shocking me with its cold. I pictured the clouds above as a pool party attended by unruly grape-sized hunks of ice, jumping in and out of the pool roughly, falling beside it, cracking its lining, water bulging at the seams. Sometimes the hail fell from the pool and sometimes the water, but always something, always hard and fast and cold. As if in punctuation of my thought, the hail resumed in earnest. A pockmarked field of acne formed atop my car and stray water pooled in the divots. New icy parachuters jumped in the holes and bounced out, making an ungodly metallic din. On the positive side, weeds circling the lawn were shredded by the onslaught, left in unidentifiable tatters that the HOA would no longer be able to recognize as weeds. Rain fell between the bombs. Wet thunks in the grass competed with the sharper percussionists from the driveway. 

All the while the branch hung on the electrical wire, alternately sagging it and releasing it upward in the jubilant rhythm of a bouncy castle. Did branches conduct electricity, I wondered? I took out my phone to check. The AI summary was quite confident that they did. I replaced the phone in my pocket. So, mine was not to reach it and touch it and tug it down, nor to saw at it with metal and place bets on the thickness of the rubber in the soles of my shoes. What I needed was ammo. 

There was a kickball, a baseball, a basketball, a football and a volleyball in the garage, but that would involve getting to the garage, all the while suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous hailstorm. It was not to be. 

I surveyed the porch. There was a wicker bench, missing its limp green padding, presumably thrown far away in the wind. Not ideal as a projectile, but maybe in a pinch. There was thesimple wooden box used for milk delivery. Not as hefty and well-built as I would have liked, and very likely to be smashed in the attempt. Then I saw it: three different sized potted plants, all uniformly dead. 

In the spirit of a curious blonde girl, I first selected the smallest plant. It felt light, which would make it easy to throw, but would reduce its impact. I set it back down. Next, I selected the largest plant. I couldn’t even pick it up with one hand, which would not be good for the accuracy of my throw. I set it down and picked up the just-right plant. Without delay I threw it at the branch. Annie Oakley could shoot a bullet with a bullet. Robin Hood could split an arrow with an arrow. I could not hit a tree branch with a potted plant. 

I picked up the wicker bench.

If I ran toward the branch with the bench lifted above my head and threw it mid-stride, I knew that I could easily dislodge the offending limb. Concern 1: the bench replaces the branch atop the wire. Concern 2: the bench slides down off the wire and onto me as I pass, making contact with both the wire and me, creating a black patch in my yard the exact shape of a pair of size-12 Skechers. Where were my life insurance documents, now that I thought of it? 

Concerns 1 and 2 were dismissed like a claustrophobic miner. I started to run…

…and then returned to the porch. Rock-solid grapes of ice thrown thousands of feet at your head actually really hurt. 

Maybe if I got my hands down under the bench and kind of launched it upward and at an angle? The right arc would probably work. It wasn’t heavy, so the idea was realistic. A flash of lightning appeared while I thought about it and exactly zero Mississippi’s later came the thunder. Time to shit or get off the pot. Or get electrocuted spectacularly. Or probably get electrocuted, causing me to evacuate my bowels, meaning shit or get off the pot was correct the first time. 

I navigated the bench into position, trying to finesse the angle, like an anxious middle-schooler lining up a free-throw. The bench started to slip, causing me to start to lean forward to catch it, causing me to lean forward still further, etc. The pain of a chunk of hail connecting with my forehead made my body draw back and shoot upward involuntarily, my hands surgingforward in the act of recoiling the remainder of my body. The bench launched up and out as a mechanical consequence of the reflexive movements of my body. I watched the arc of the bench through the air, wondering if this is what a scorpion felt likeduring a kill. “Hey look, my tail is shooting toward that guy,” it marveled, a bystander in its own vicious attack. 

The bench connected with the branch. When next I tell the story there will be sparks. I will be Robert Redford hitting his homerun in The Natural, a shower of sparkling electricity celebrating my achievement. 

In reality: thunk, teeter, teeter, thunk-thunk. A bench and a branch canoodled shyly on wet grass. Pinocchio lost his nose. The dinosaur nuggets in the air fryer made it back into the sunshine. The dogs quieted. The disco closed down. 

To celebrate my victory, I went inside and I ate nuggets with my wife and daughter. There may have been discussion of a more opportune time to have resolved the branch situation, but I forget. All I remember is the shower of sparks and the glory. 

Oh the glory!