The Three Headed Butcher Monster

As you may or may not already know a tornado touched down in Greeley yesterday. Let me say that again: a TORNADO!!! touched down in Greeley. It didn’t do any damage that I have heard about and no one was hurt or killed by it but it is still crazy. Tornados are amazing things. They destroy stuff like nothing else. Luckily this one was kind of a pussy and make horrible things happen.

I have lived in Greeley for 30 years (or so) and I don’t remember a tornado touching down like this one did. I don’t remember the sky going all green and crazy. I don’t remember tennis to softball sized hail happening. It was nuts. Where was I during all of this? It is kind of a funny story.

Sarah and I had decided that we needed to make up a batch of cookies. We make them up in batches of 40 and then bake them as necessary and we were down to our last three. Unfortunately we were also out of butter. It was decided that one of us needed to run to the store and retrieve butter and a few other items from the store. Being a brave and upstanding member of our household I decided to brave the storm. Sarah even asked “Are you sure you should go out in this?” All I could think was that never before had a tornado touched down, so I said “Yeah, nothing is going to happen.”

Those are what would have been famous last words, but I made it through. As I was driving to the store I noticed that the sky had changed to a weird green color. I also remembered a teacher mentioning that before a tornado the sky turns a weird green color. I admit at that moment I was thinking something along the lines of “Oh shit, oh shit, I am going to die.” Not really. I panicked a little but figured I could run in grab the stuff and make it back home before shit went down. I was wrong.

I arrived at Safeway, hopped out of my car and headed towards the store. I noticed what seemed to be a large number of Safeway employees standing outside. One of them motioned me over and directed me to head towards the back of the store. Apparently there had been a tornado siren (which is apparently a thing) and Safeway’s plan was to stick us all in one of the freezers. Specifically the meat counter freezer. Where they chop up the meat. So me a 50 of my new closest friends all head into the freezer. It is cold in there. And of course there are children present. We all start to slowly freeze.

About that time one of the Safeway butchers realizes that they have an entire closet full of butcher coats. These are like lab coats but made to hide bloodstains. Or at least I assume that is the difference. He comes in with an arm load and like good people war give them to the children and the elderly first. We all start eying one another to figure out who we will have to eat first.

Standing next to me is a women with three of her nephews. These kids are maybe knee height. They are shivering and sharing one coat. I hear in the most pitiful voice possible “I’m scared.” I hate it when kids are scared. I kneel down and say “What are you scared of? You are part of a Three Headed Butcher Monster.” He looked up at me, smiled a tiny bit and then raised his hands into claws and growled. Other people laughed, fun was had by all and the overall tension in the freezer went down.

They did find more coats and everyone(including me) got one to wear. It was like the international butcher convention. I found the coat to be quite comfortable. Not only did it cover me up but it had two conveniently located pockets for holding your cell phone and keys. After about 30 minutes of freezer-ness the storm went away. The Safeway people let us out of the freezer and led us back to the front of the store. Sadly thy took back the butcher coats.

Out in the store I went about my shopping. I grabbed all the stuff I needed and realized that I didn’t have my keys. I had to hunt down one of the employees and have them take me into the back. We dug through pile of about 75 butcher coats when I finally found my keys. Phew.