I had me a legitimate poop-your-pants moment today. I was driving on the interstate, and a pretty good thunderstorm blows in on my right. It's blowing sheets of rain at me and making it generally difficult to drive.

I look up, and I notice I can see lots of rain blowing sideways. I noted it only because I'd never seen it doing anything like that up that high before. Huge sheets of rain, up at the tree tops. I'm sure it does it all the time, but I've just never noticed it before.

And then, it got scary.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a tree fall on the edge of the woods that line the interstate.

And about the time I pass that point of the forest, the wind catches me. It catches my truck, and shoves me sideways. It felt like getting hit by another car. That's how hard the wind hit me. It hit me, and skidded me sideways from the right lane into the passing lane. I suppose I'm lucky nobody was driving next to me.

Just never been blown ten feet sideway by the wind.

I couldn't see. The wind was blowing hard enough that as my windshield wipers hit their apex, they would hang there a little bit in the wind. I pulled off the interstate and pulled into the Burger King. I waited in my truck for a minute. When the rain lightened up enough, I jogged inside. I ordered a Sprite and I waited a few minutes for the storm to pass by. A feller who was hauling a horse trailer told me the wind picked his trailer up onto its driver's side wheels.

Wind. Hell yeah.

Also, there was a little bit of a tense moment when a kid with a shaved head turned around to leave the counter at Burger King. Standing behind me was a black family, and they saw what I saw at the same time. The kid had swastika tattoos on his forearms and the "SS" lightning symbol inked onto the side of his head. As he turned, he met eyes with me, and then the father of the family standing behind me. He quickly looked at the ground and left the Burger King with his food. Even in the middle of the thunderstorm.
It was just an odd occurrence.