"Riiiiidin' the Storm Out..."
What's more clusterfuckish and confusing and frustrating then being stuck out in a restaurant during a potential tornado?
I will tell you. It is being stuck out in a small, family-owned KOREAN restaurant during a potential tornado. As if people running around freaking out and panicking isn't enough, a bunch of people who barely speak English running around freaking out and panicking is, to someone who speaks no Korean, a glimpse into INSANITY.
If they weren't out in the parking lot watching the wall cloud creep up on the restaurant (we were across the street from Tinker, which you know, if you were watching the news last night, is where the weather adventures all started), they were in the restaurant eating rice and noodles and trying to follow Gary England on t.v.
Taylor and I met up with my cousin Andrea and her husband Stephen around 7 p.m. at my favorite restaurant, the Korean House in Midwest City, for dinner. Of all the random days to be in Midwest City, we arrive under what would be the heart of potential twister circulation about 15 minutes before the fun would begin.
When it suddenly began to hail something awful outside, and the sirens started going off, my cousin trips out shrieking, "My car!" and she along with everyone else runs outside under the overhang to watch as golfball + size hail rains down on all of our vehicles.
I was one of a few who stayed inside, because I was STARVING, and proceeded to continue to eat the kim bap that we had just gotten (Korean sushi rolls...yummy!).
I had waited all day for this meal and I wasn't about to let some stupid Oklahoma false alarm ruin it for me.
Andrea bursts back into the restaurant with a look in her eyes like a terrified wild animal, exclaiming "We're out of here! It's like right over us!" grabs her purse and escapes back out the front, with her husband half-heartedly trailing behind (disappointed in knowing that he was leaving all of that delicious kim bap for me to inhale myself).
I hear her peel out in her Saleen Mustang and haul ass out of the parking lot. The sound of screeching tires mingling with the sound of hail slamming down onto the roof frightened the table of Korean ladies sitting next to us.
"What going on? Tornado coming?" they ask me, their eyes wide and panicked.
"We're OK, they're just freaking out," I say.
"Where it at? What we do? We leave? It come now?"
I decide to take it upon myself to act as a tornadic activity expert to help calm them down. Normally, when at home in this situation, I already have my cats in a cat carrier with my dog on a leash, armed with a flashlight and radio in my safe place, about to have a heart attack. But last night, I had to stay calm or I was going to lose my damn mind.
I get up and play "weathergirl" with the bigscreen t.v. standing by us, trying to explain to them the situation at hand, pointing out on the map where we were and what was going on. They were so attentive and listened to me so anxiously that it only egged me on and I began to believe that I actually knew what I was talking about. It was kind of fun. I knew my obsessive weather watching during storm season would pay off eventually.
Our nice Korean waitress returns with a tray full of food, looking confused because half of our party had jumped ship and I was standing by the t.v. giving a lesson on funnel clouds to the table next to us.
"You still want eat?" she asks me, while people and children around us are rushing around calling out questions in broken English and Korean to no one in particular.
"Yes!" I rushed back to my table. FINALLY. My soup has come. I have been thinking about this soup all day.
"Where your husband? He leave? He still want eat too?"
Damn it. I get up again and stomp outside to find him.
Taylor is still out there, standing way out past the end of the parking lot, almost in the street, one hand on his hip, the other shielding his forehead, watching this sick looking milky gray storm cell accumulate about a half a mile away in the sky. The wind is whipping everything around and the Korean restaurant owner's kids are frolicking about firing off questions at me, so it's difficult to hear.
Once I see what everyone is looking at, I realize the severity of the storm that never turned into a tornado...but should have.
"Should we leave?" I shout, "What should we do?"
No answer. Like most men would be, he is mesmerized by the storm and is incapable of focusing on anything else. My stomach growls angrily at me.
"Fuck this. I'm hungry, I'm going inside."
I spend the next fifteen minutes torn between making trips outside to hollar at him to come in before he gets blown away (he would only look at me blankly and ignore me) and going back inside to eat and check in with Gary England.
Eventually, after arguing outside with Taylor over "Should we stay?" "Should we leave?" for too long, I can't take it anymore and I hurriedly pay for our meal, throw it all in to-go boxes so that we can leave and speed to Andrea's house since they have a cellar.
It's interesting to me how, despite the threat of impending doom, all of the white patrons bailed immediately, but all of the Asian patrons remained for the most part to eat our kimchee and kim bap...and I wouldn't have left if Taylor hadn't frustrated me to the point of crazy with his inability to make a decision, when it was obvious that he thought we should leave.
It takes a lot to tear an Asian away from a good meal.
Tornado? Pshaw! I have rice and noodles- bring it on. That's how dedicated we are to our food and that is the kind of power that the Korean House has. It's THAT good.
