Poem: Weather Girl
Weather Girl
6 a.m. The sky shrieks
with lightning. Thunder.
A hard blow. More lightning.
In air electrified by the storm,
static stands every hair on end.
Delighting as the pressure drops,
I am as alive as the day
in Earth Science, I discovered
a way to love my hair.
Adolescent poster child of nerdiness,
my waves had become my enemy.
A daughter of the Free Love decade
of Breck models and daisied locks;
my crown was a unruly mop
of tangles too curly to comb.
Ironed, orange-juice canned,
blunt cut – nothing could make me cool…
until a seventh-grade science lesson.
It was April – the monsoon season of bad hair days.
Ponytailed and too smart for popularity,
I followed our teacher’s command to turn
the shiny textbook page to the next chapter.
We were moving from the erosion of rocks and minerals
to meteorology – in my envious mind,
the purview of mini-skirted TV weather girls
in white smiles, straight bangs and full bust lines.
Twirling his whistle, Coach Hudson started his appeal:
Weather is nothing more than wind and water,
pressure and temperature, geography and space.
His first pitch: to measure the humidity
of the East Texas air with a hygrometer
made with human hair. But whose?
Then the words I had waited to hear.
It needs to be curly for this gismo to work.
As the whole class turned in unison,
I rose and loosed my voluptuous cascade.
Plucking a single strand, that man made me cry
with scientific pride. Who cared about cheerleaders
or soloists or student council…or boys?
Glad to be alive; I was a weather girl!
by Anne McCrady
