by Marlo Bennett

One of the creepiest things to see is a sunbeam piercing a sky that's almost black with rain clouds. It's beautiful, too, of course -- an anomaly of nature, a tiny piece of an enormous flaming ball of gases that somehow manages to float through layers of what will soon become a thunderstorm, fight its way to the ground, and deliver a little cheer to people who would rather see more of its siblings and fewer of its enemies. But as much as I admire that beam's persistence, I can't help wishing that it would be still for just a little longer and let people like me have their fun.

For me, a storm transforms the most mundane views into amazing things. Seen close-up, two blades of grass that are dripping with rain and being tossed about by the wind become a pair of gallant knights dueling to the death for the love of a beautiful princess -- a nearby rose that is sheltered from the elements by a luckily-placed hedge. An abandoned paper cup metamorphoses into an ocean for twigs, bugs, and leaves, and they in turn become hungry sharks, shaky boats, and courageous sailors, each fighting for their own survival. Cars look shiny, clean, and new (forget about how they'll look later). Even something potentially irritating like a power outage can be an adventure when it turns you into a pioneer just settling the country and triumphing over a lack of fire and hot food. The clouds, of course, can become absolutely anything -- a mountain peak, a sailboat, an elephant. If you're driving alone down a deserted stretch of highway (I-35 near Carl's Corner is a perfect place), you can turn off your lights and tune your radio to static and be the only person left in the world. A window becomes a frame for a painting of a world that's never existed before and will change the next time you blink, never to exist again. An ordinary door becomes a portal to all these worlds.

It's weird: when I was a kid, I never liked fairy tales much, but they seem to get a lot more interesting when they come from my own head.

It's just so easy to forget how much good a difference like a storm can do for the human mind when you're cold and wet and wrestling with an umbrella on your way to work. The beauty gets trampled by the inconvenience; the clarity is destroyed by the negativity. It's like when you were a kid and had a morbidly fascinating fear of the dark -- did you care that someone on the playground didn't like you when the monster in your closet was hungrily prying open the door? How can everyday troubles loom as large as they usually do when you can look at a tree and see a high-rise home for elves?