WISDOM OF THE AGED

I was about ten. Already gifted with that arrogant egocentric egotism which usually afflicts teenagers, I listened patiently when Grandpa Smith regarded the gusting winds and driving rain pummeling Sheffield and pronounced “It’s a cyclone.”

Having learned that cyclones occur in tropical waters, in the Pacific Ocean, and not in northern Alabama I felt the smugness and conceit of superior knowledge. No way a cyclone could get that far inland.

As I sit here now in my eighth decade I am one of millions of television viewers watching coverage of Hurricane Fay, now downgraded to a tropical storm. It swept across Florida, then turned west  to soak southern Alabama and Mississippi. And I heard one of the television weathermen refer to the storm, as it moved north, as a cyclone.

Can you guess where the northern-most spiral bands of the cyclone’s circulation are .... ??

In northern Alabama, dumping rain on Sheffield.

I guess I’m learning late in life that I didn’t learn much early in life. Like the old German woman said, “We grow too soon old and too late smart.”