Journal 14: Scared

The time when I was most scared was when I was 14.  I was at a summer camp with the Boy Scouts in Camp Bunn, Illinois.  Summer Camp was going well, but as always, the weather became rainy.  However, this time it got bad.  The sky turned green and the thunder was very close.  The camp's tornado sirens began to wail.  At the beginning of camp, all of the scout leaders were given instruction on where to take shelter in case of bad weather because tornadoes are not that uncommon in southern Illinois.  Our troop was supposed to take shelter in a runoff ditch in the woods behind our camp.  Great.  The sirens go off and we are guided a few hundred feet to the ditch.  We are instructed to lie down and cover our heads; we do so. I am on the bottom of the pile of young men and am face-down on my stomach at the bottom of the ditch.  The rain is coming down in buckets, the wind is, well, tornado-like.  A stream is swallowing the lower half of my body, trees are blowing over and landing across the ditch, and lightning strikes only 200 yards away at the climbing tower.  This was terrifying.  I was drenched, muddy, under a pile of bodies, trees are nearly landing on me, lightning is very close and I can feel it through the ground, and I was 14.  I seriously thought I would die. I didn't.  I'm pretty sure it's blatantly obvious why this was scary, but in case it wasn't: I am not usually afraid of storms, I haven't been since I was five.  However, I do have a fear of suffocating, drowning, and getting smashed by a tree.  Its a bit irrational, I know.  This is the time when I was most scarred.  I think it was a fairly acceptable time to be afraid.  Summer camp that year was exciting to say the least.