Nurse the Hate: Hate Lightning

I was reading the New York Times today in which there was an article about people that had been struck by lightning.  The vast majority of these instances happen in Florida, because if something terrible is going to happen to you, there is a greater chance than not it will happen in Florida.  I believe that just like a carton of orange juice, the sediment of the United States population oozes down Florida, eventually settling in the Greater Miami area.  Every single person involved in a scam runs to Florida and then buys a big gaudy house which cannot be repossessed due to Florida State law.  They then nest up there where they assemble a legal team, listen to dance music, do lots of cocaine, and have intercourse with strippers.  This is why such amazing people like the principal partners of Enron and OJ Simpson settled there after their “troubles”.  Florida has, in general, bad karma moving into town every single day.  Something has to give, and in this case, it’s lightning strikes.

The article painted a terrible story of what happens if you get struck by lightning.  My takeaway from the article was twofold.  One was that it’s best to not run to the beach if storm clouds are gathering.  Second, if you live in The South, anything that appears terrible from the outside is actually a blessing from God.  Please note the following excerpt from the article.   

Cameron Poimboeuf, then 15, was playing Pokemon Go with a friend. As they ran for shelter from an approaching storm, he was hit and his heart stopped. Cassandra Thomas, a pediatric nurse standing on a balcony, saw it happen and raced down nine flights of stairs and across the beach to reach him. She did CPR for about 20 minutes, with the help of an off-duty officer.

Predictions were dire: Cameron would not recover or his brain would be seriously damaged.

But he lived and largely recovered. “It’s hard not to see God in that,” his mother, Karen Poimboeuf, said. Cameron still suffers from invisible wounds, post-traumatic stress disorder, nerve pain, mood swings, sleeplessness and anxiety. His friend also was hit and suffered short-term leg immobility because of the shock to the nerves, but is fine.

 

To summarize, if a 15 year old kid is playing Pokemon Go with a buddy and gets fried by lightning, it’s “hard not to see God in that”.  Now I would counter by asking what sort of vengeful God strikes a boy playing Pokemon Go almost killing him and leaving him with a scrambled brain and constant nerve pain.  Perhaps Pokemon Go is the reason for this mighty and terrible God’s swift and terrible actions.  Perhaps this boy and his friend were dabbling in “the dark arts” and worshipping a false God in this Pokemon Go situation.  I don’t know anything about Pokemon.  This is because I am a bitter middle aged man with a cold dark heart.  I did look up Pokemon on The Google, and discovered something called a “Squirtle”, which to this point I had assumed was a small woman that performed a fetish act on video.  There is also something called a “Wigglytuff”, which I am certain has something to do with public masturbation while using welding gloves.  That was all I needed to know.  It’s best to steer clear of Pokemon.  Cameron Poimboeuf learned that the hard way.

Yet, it is absolutely fascinating to me that Cameron’s mother thought God had shined a light on Cameron and his deviant Pokemon habit.  Rather than focus on the odds of being struck by lightning in Florida (1 in 960,000), she instead sees the kid surviving as the blessing of God.  To see the lightning strike as random chance but his recovery of the caring hand of the Lord to me seems counter intuitive.  However, I suppose it is best to assemble whatever sort of reality one needs to proceed through life.  If she were to flip it around and think “Cameron was that one in a million person that got struck by lightning from the heavens by an all knowing God focused on swift and irrefutable divine justice.  He is my boy.  I birthed something that Almighty God Himself struck with all his might.”  That’s a bit much to take on when you are living in a place with strip plazas, alligator attacks, ferocious insects, mind numbing humidity, and non-stop soul crushing club music.  The last thing you need on top of that is the Divine Being putting his attention into crushing your kid like a bug.

Maybe I am in some sort of existential crisis.  Does my life have any meaning, purpose or value?  Probably not.  I don’t have God tossing thunderbolts from the heavens at me.  Conversely I also don’t have anything amazing coming together in moments of crisis.  I am punching the clock.  Maybe that Poimboeuf kid was onto something running through the bushes looking for a Squirtle.  I hope not.  I am into making lifestyle changes as needed.  However, I don’t think I want to get hit by lightning as a deviant chasing a Squirtle.