Dear Lightning that Struck in Quincy, MA Sometime in 1989, or 1990,
I guess this letter is actually a little bit hypothetical because… well, I’ll be honest: I don’t know if you exist.
My friend (She was once my best friend, my only friend. She was my very first friend, if you don’t count that kid from my preschool, which I kind of don’t, only because I don’t remember his name.) claimed that you hit her. So you’ve always been a big part of my memory, Lightning, and I always thought of you with wonder and with fear. She was frazzled, that was for sure. She said she had been walking with her umbrella across a bridge (this was much later in our friendship, when we were now “childhood friends” and visited each other only occasionally, and she was old enough to have a part-time job that she walked to and from, in the rain sometimes, apparently) when you struck, pausing her walk home, frizzing her hair, shaking her balance, and scattering her thoughts to the stormy wind. When she arrived at the house she was fussed over, given water, a chair, a chance to tell her story.
You were her story.
The thing is this: was I there or did she tell me about it later? I can’t remember. Did she actually tell me that she had been hit by lightning twice and that the third time a person was hit by lightning it was likely to kill them? Can you weigh in on that theory? And of course, the real thing, the thing I started this letter with, is actually this: did you happen?
I could ask her (we are now only Facebook friends, so it might be weird) but I probably won’t. She was always more grownup than I was – in actual years but also in life years – and I can imagine her response to that question.
Besides, maybe I don’t want to know.
-e.