No, but I always wanted to. I've read some wild historical accounts of it.

What Miko said!

Would that be "Saint Elmo's Fire"? Like the old brat-pack movie?

No, but I stood and watched a man being electrocuted by a downed power line when I was six. I don't know why lightning and that episode are so tied together in my memory; the man had struck a pole with his car and stepped on the live wire getting out of his car, so lightning had nothing to do with it. But maybe people talk so much about the dangers of electricity and being struck by lightning that the two became fused in my young head. I remember, it was a hot day, and he steamed, and his eyes fell in, and he smelled; my father had raced to the nearest house (we were behind him on the road when it happened) and I watched him shake and die without a word.

But lightning, right! That's what we're talking about. My grandpa used to tell me about seeing ball lightning (he grew up in Kansas), and also about seeing some other strange forms of electricity at sea.

No, but Laura Ingalls Wilder did, and I believe her.

shane dear, St. Elmo's Fire (in which my friend Beatrice played Emilio's wife) is something different.

On preview: jeebus, Hugh!

GROSS, Hugh!

Sorry, childhood trauma has its adult triggers, and questions about ball lightning always pop that episode into my head. That shit was scary.

I'm sure it was! Good GOD I'd have nightmares about that for life. I'll take my spider and tornado dreams over that any day. It must be imprinted on your brain, ya poor guy.

It's not so bad, really. Kind like having once worked in a dirty, unairconditioned factory with idiots yelling at you all day long and a giant injection moulder whelping plastic laundry baskets every fifteen seconds makes you pretty immune to thinking your current job is bad, now I see and hear of a lot of unpleasant things and, while I understand how horrible they might be for anyone involved, I myself am able to soldier through and do what it is I have to do (which is usually making sure others can cope). I think it made me stronger in a way. It certainly made me more careful.

But yeah, I can still smell him when I think about it.

It's odd, yesterday I had some bad bacon at Quizno's, and I decided I wouldn't eat pork for awhile. Today I'm reminded how people smell like pigs and permed hair when they cook; it's really gross. That thought, combined with the nasty gut and taste in my mouth, has me off meat altogether. At least for now.

Sorry to write such shocking things on such a lovely day.

I hear that association, Hugh. I used to work in the body bequests area sometimes, at the med school where I did my PhD. We embalmed the people who had donated their bodies for teaching. I also taught a lot with prosections (preserved body parts). Try eating roast beef an hour after one of those classes. Yeah. Not so much.

I've never seen ball lightning, but I have seen the Marfa lights.

Hugh, sorry about that. I won't bring up lightning again.

Ball lightning is what bigfoot turns into when you get too close to him, so that his people will not be discovered.

No worries, warbaby; thirty years down the road I'm more like "holy shit, this is some crazy shit that happened to me as a boy" than I am all "woe is me, what crazy shit happened to me as a boy." Hell, it might've made me a better man somehow.

By all means, bring up lightning all you want.