People really crawl out of the walls. Usually it happens when you post a good selfie, you win the Powerball, or get famous for being a dumbass on the evening news. I was going to be done with blogging forever, but the hurricane experts in Indiana have pulled me out of young retirement. Here is my open letter to all my Midwest, tropical weather doctors.

First of all, I was not nervous about Hurricane Irma. I have been keeping my cool. Until. UNTIL. Everyone in Indiana started telling me I was going to die. My Indiana friends have life after Madeline May totally planned.

Ben Meer, sweet, sweet Ben. Or so I thought:

My best friend’s ex-boyfriend was also so thoughtful:

Even my own dad thinks the closest place to be in the clear is all the way back home in Indiana:

Don’t worry about me! I was so pumped to see how people react in a hurricane that I sprinted to Walk-Mart early on to get the full preparation experience. My first sign of the apocalypse was the lack of shopping carts. There was not a cart to be found. I finally found one after running back through the parking lot and checking the little corrals. The line to get a case of water was 50 shopping carts deep and you better bet your ass I was in that line to get the case of water. The one thing that silly me didn’t tote from Indiana was a flashlight. Apparently everyone in Tampa needs 10 flashlights to make their own marquee to be seen from outer space because the shelves were empty. So I resorted to the amish life with some votive candles that had the Virgin Mary on them. God bless.

The best comparison I have to preparing for a hurricane is preparing for a blizzard. The electricity might go out, you might have to pee 10 times in the toilet before you waste a precious flush, and if you don’t have milk/bread/eggs, you are surely going to starve. It’s nothing like a tornado where it could come spur-of-the-moment and be over just as quick. I have been hearing about this for over a week now. It feels like it is NEVER going to hit. But, oh baby, I think it is about to and it doesn’t sound good.

Here’s who I want you to worry about and pray for: USF has nearly 50,000 students to be concerned about. In my graduate class alone, 90% of the students are foreign. They don’t have cars. They don’t have family to escape to. They have never experienced this tropical weather, either. I don’t know how they have been able to prepare for this, but I do know they are panicking. And, most importantly, pray for the people who have already been hit. If not Harvey or Irma, there are still other storms brewing. Human beings are tough creatures, but we aren’t tougher than Mother Nature.

This is my first hurricane, fam bam. I’m excited. I’m nervous. I KNOW IT IS COMING. I do. You all can keep warning me if it makes you feel better, but I am here, in the end of times, getting much needed advice from all of my Floridian professors. And we have started feeling it. Some serious lightning was flashing as I was typing this, so I went outside on my patio to take a video. There was no rain or wind, but a lightning bolt must have opened the portal to hell because I jumped out of my skin from the crash. I was humbled. I went back inside. I will not go outside for the next 5 days.

Rain Boot Ready,
Madeline May