One Woman's Striking History

By Donna Clayton Lawder

They say truth is stranger than fiction. My life with lightning is like that.

At cocktail parties and such, I've often drawn a small audience and some interesting stares when I tell of losing three, count 'em, three TVs and three answering machines during lightning storms. The kicker is always the one about my bed being struck. Yes, I was in it.

But let's start at the beginning — well, maybe the beginning. Who's to say when this all started? You'll see what I mean.

I remember the first time my family lost a television set to lightning. We had this ritual around the Clayton household: A storm would kick up and Mom would go into a panic, becoming positively "shrill," as my father would say. She'd make sure all three of her kids were indoors, then run around the house unplugging all the appliances. And I mean all of the appliances.

Dad found it positively funny.

"Your mother gets herself so wound up," he'd say, hands on hips, looking heavenward, shaking his head. He'd go so far as to vex her, going out and standing in the driveway during a real thunder-boomer. He'd even chase behind her and plug an appliance back in.

I think it was one of those re-plugging times when a strike got the TV — an old black-and-white in a huge wooden cabinet. I remember that the set was on. The thunder was right overhead, and I mean loud, when suddenly there was this strange pop and the TV just sort of imploded.

You'd think I'd remember the show that was on, but I don't. I do remember Mom and Dad looking at each other, kind of stunned. I think she was as shocked to be validated as he was to be proven wrong.

That was only our first big storm for that summer. We lived in New Jersey (no jokes, please), not far from the shore. Extreme weather kicks up pretty quick there, with thunder roaring in louder than the jets flying over to return to Lakehurst Air Force Base just a few miles away. I was used to the noise of those rainy, humidity-quashing thunder-boomers, but they still triggered fear.

Numerous storms and a couple of years passed by without any more appliance casualties. Dad went back to snickering — calling that TV set incident "a fluke" — but I noticed he didn't go so far as to stand in the driveway anymore to prove his point or plug in the appliances Mom ran around unplugging.

As if to re-instill our fear of lightning, which she called "a healthy respect," Mom repeatedly told us kids of her own numerous close encounters with Thor's deadly-glorious bolts.

These tales were always a little mysterious-sounding, though the details were always the same in the telling and re-telling. My mom was just a teenager, standing in my great-aunt's kitchen, when a strike came in the window and hit the bean pot boiling on the stove, sending the contents splattering straight up onto the ceiling. A hole, black around the edge, was burned right through that silver pot.

"Metal and water," she'd say seriously, raising a cautionary finger to make her point. In her science lesson on danger, one attracted the lightning; the other conducted. "So never touch the faucet or run water of any kind during a storm," she'd say, or words to that effect. I was thirsty a lot in the summer. Soon as a storm rumbled in, I'd find myself wishing I'd gotten a glass of water when it had been safe.

There were other tales about how lightning "just missed" my mom in her youth. In one, she and some friends and a couple of her sisters were playing in a field when a bad storm rolled in. They ran for the cover of — trees?! Well, I guess that seemed safer than remaining in the field, essentially becoming a human lightning rod. The way Mom told the story, lightning struck the ground right behind her as she fled the field and catapulted her through the air for several feet. This incredible account was later verified by my Aunt Joanie.

My mom's next encounter — and my all-time favorite lightning story — occurred a few years after that. She and one or two of her sisters were out in some rowboats on a lake, enjoying a "date" of sorts with a couple of boyfriends, one of whom was my future Uncle Howard. Of course a storm kicked up — how could lightning resist the triple enticement of my mother in a metal boat on a lake?

Mom's description of the storm — with pelting rain and hail, and a couple of lightning bolts streaking into the water — painted a World War II-like picture in my mind, like bombs crashing down all around them. I had my doubts, but they were later erased by Uncle Howard's recounting of the event, identical in all details.

Being a logical sort, perhaps even trying to calm my fears with science, I started looking for the commonalities in these stories. The entirety of my mom's side of the family hails from that old Garden State, and her sisters and their families lived within a 15-minute drive from us. Was it New Jersey? Did I just happen to grow up in a highly conductive part of the world? And what about the fact that these tales all involved "the Walter Women," as we called ourselves, from my mom's maiden name — Mom, her sisters, my great-aunt. . . .

"You're just like your mother," Granny Walter would say. "You're just like your grandmother Walter," Mom would say. I began to wonder if this was a good thing.

Back to my own childhood, we were about to have a few strikes in rapid succession that would touch my life personally and build upon my own collection of lightning tales. When we last left Mom and Dad, they had amiably agreed to disagree about lightning — she could unplug appliances, and though he might snicker behind his hand, he would not plug anything back in.

Then came the summer that removed all doubt.

Like I said, those New Jersey storms roll in fast. One was overhead in, pardon me, a flash. My brother and I cried to be allowed to go get the dog and bring him into the house.

"And touch a chain-link fence?!" my mother shrieked, as if we were mad. Dad ran out while her back was turned — she was probably busy unplugging things — and brought in the hound. Just seconds later, or so it seemed, there was a huge rumble and crash that made the house shake. The cracking sound went on and on. We looked out the window to see a tree just 10 yards from the house, cleaved perfectly in half — a direct hit! When it was safe to venture outside, we found half the tree on the ground; the other half still standing, scorched. I remember Dad inviting us to touch the cauterized wound. You could smell the burnt wood for days.

And that was just the first bad storm of that noteworthy summer season. In subsequent thunder-boomers of admirable ferocity we also lost our second TV set and an answering machine.

Mom had also cautioned against talking on the phone in a storm. Lightning could run right up the line to the receiver and strike you dead in the head, she warned. There are urban myths out there about that one and, in fact, the urban-legend site Snopes.com confirms this phenomenon. Mom's word was good enough for me.

Though I understand that an answering machine is an electrical appliance in its own right, that one going down in flames just added fuel to Mom's fire about staying off the telephone. We Walter Women developed a sort of emergency phone shorthand.

"Storm. Gotta go. <Click>," was immediately understood by us and not at all considered rude.

But the crowning-glory experience of that summer, if you will, was my own up-close-and-personal visit from the lightning gods. I was a young teenager — maybe this is the age at which it starts with Walter Women? — and lying in my bed, when an early-morning thunderstorm rolled in. Yes, storms kick up all times of day in New Jersey. Not like here in New Mexico, where one can pretty much count on late-afternoon monsoons.

I was lying there, pretty sleepy, I'll admit, listening to the thunder and feeling the rain-misted breeze fluttering in through my (of course!) open window. I remember the Walter Women vigilance kicking in, bringing me to hackle-raising alertness, and I realized that I had better close that window!

No time.

The next thing I was aware of was an eerie z-z-z-zing-g-g-g-g, causing me instinctively to cower in my bed. When I opened my eyes, I saw the foot of my brass bed glowing a strange purple-blue color. There was a peculiar burning smell in the air — chemical, like burning plastic. When I felt it was safe, I threw myself from the mattress to the floor, careful to not touch any metal parts, and examined the headboard. There was a huge black spot there, instead of white paint, just a couple of feet from where my head had rested.

And so, convinced of my electrifying Walter Woman identity, I went on through life, always taking "proper precautions" during a storm, and eventually getting married. (Not that those things necessarily have anything to do with each other. Sorry, honey.)

Now, whether he's just trying to keep me calm or not let me convince myself that I'm seven kinds of bad luck to have around when a storm kicks up, my husband has always downplayed the Walter Woman Curse thing. He doesn't put any stock in it when I point out that he knows no one else who's lost that many appliances or had as many close calls.

Then, in our first new home together, a condo in Princeton an hour from where I grew up, we lost our first answering machine during a lightning storm.

"See?" I insisted. He shrugged it off as a cheap Radio Shack machine.

Then, in the second condo, we lost our second answering machine. Yes, it was another Radio Shack cheapie, but by now I was convinced that the curse of the Walter Women had been passed down. Again he shrugged.

He shrugged when, after another storm that summer, the TV set inexplicably no longer worked. No imploding or dramatic crackle this time — it just didn't work the next time we tried to use it after a storm passed through. It could have just died, he insisted. Well, it was old.

Still.

A couple of years later, I was working in a place — and, yes, still in New Jersey — where we all ate lunch around a big table each day. One noontime, a tremendous thunder and lightning storm blew in and we got to talking about it.

"You'll never believe this," I started, then told the salient points of my electrifying history. But they did believe me. In fact, my supervisor asked me to leave for the day, saying she'd pay me for the whole day but that she'd just feel safer if I weren't around the computers. Twice more that summer I was given the afternoon off, with pay.

Even with such proof before him — an otherwise cheapskate employer willing to pay me to leave during a lightning storm — my husband patiently and consistently remains incredulous about any connection between lightning and me. Bless him.

He takes pains to remind me that this was all a while back. The last major appliance loss was, after all, more than 10 years ago. And, heck, here in New Mexico we've not lost so much as a toaster oven! Maybe it really was New Jersey after all?

But I have noticed that he unplugs the computers here when a monsoon rolls in.

"That's just common sense," he'll say. A TV set is easily replaced, but all that stuff on the computer? Irreplaceable, so he's just being sensible.

But he did buy one kick-ass surge-protecting power strip for my computer, and urges me to run on battery and wireless whenever storms are near.

Have you ever heard of a more tender gesture of love?

Donna Clayton Lawder is senior editor of Desert Exposure, and would
love to talk with you about her experiences with lightning.
Just don't call her during a storm.

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