Hurricane Miah

So here is how she even became Hurricane Miah, as well as the latest hijinks. (Yes, twelve years later she and I, together and separately, still raise hell.)

The origin of "Hurricane Miah" is simple. During our freshman year, she lived in the dorms, but for sophomore year moved back home to the 'burbs with her parents. She was still on campus for classes during the week (and was always welcome to crash with any of us) but she had a tendency to kind of blow into the room - whichever room we were all hanging in at the time - shake up our lives a little with the latest craziness, and then blow on out again.

Over the years, we've shared many "wacky, madcap capers." Among other things, she was present for the birth of, not just one, but ALL THREE of my children. (There is, BTW, a story coming later about that; I promise I will keep it light for the faint of heart. A.k.a. the men.) But this latest adventure, thankfully, did not include me except as a peripheral.

One Sunday afternoon about a month ago, I was at my mom-in-law's for the weekend, as I usually am. And, again as usual, I called my voice mailbox for the home phone to check messages. Lo and behold, a message from Miah. Which had been left at about 2:30 a.m., and which gave me the phone number to her hospital room... HOSPITAL ROOM?!?!?! Of course I called right away, and through a fog of morphine (administered by a hottie male nurse, incidentally) she giggled her way through the story. It had all begun when she had gone skydiving, several years before. Her little brother found it incredibly cool, and so she promised him that if he stuck it out and graduated high school, they would go skydiving together. So the weekend before his graduation, she and her boyfriend of several years lived up to the promise.

Dave jumped, and it went fine.

Johnny jumped and it went fine.

Miah jumped, the chute didn't open quite correctly, and then an errant gust of wind pushed her into a stand of trees, a small forest really, on private land next to the airstrip. There was a small clearing within that stand of trees. She missed it. Now, you have to remember, this is how SHE described it to ME... You know those cartoons, where someone falls through the trees, hitting each branch on the way down with some grunt or groan of pain? Yeah. That was her. When all was said and done, she wound up with a shattered ankle, a fractured back (don't worry, she's not paralyzed), a bruised bottom and an even more bruised ego. Lying flat on her back, as the pros from the skydiving place are shouting reassurances through the walkie talkies or whatever, she hears the disgruntled landowner fussing and shouting about people trespassing on his property. The skydiving people were trying to calm him and apologize, and she, STILL FLAT ON HER BACK AND BROKEN, is shouting her apologies... "Sorry, mister, didn't mean to hit your trees!"

Well, she's out of commission for quite a while, sleeping in a rented hospital bed, out of work and on short-term disability, but taking it all in stride. In the meantime, after she had finished telling me, and the morphine was starting to make her sleepy, we got off the phone. I proceeded to tell my daughters what had happened to their Auntie Miah, and of course, AS SHE DID, I laughed hysterically the whole time. My mom-in-law, standing nearby, crossed her arms and shook her head in disapproval, "She's such a good friend to you, how can you laugh about it like that?!??!" until I reassured her that Miah had laughed twice as hard telling me, albeit on heavy painkillers.

About half an hour later, we were all inside watching cartoons (Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, to be exact), and one of the characters fell out of a treehouse, toppling to the ground below, hitting every branch on the way down, with load grunts and groans all the way. My mom-in-law said, so softly we almost didn't hear her, "Hey, girls, look... that's what happened to Auntie Miah."