The other day I wrote about screaming. I claimed that I don’t scream often. Apparently, I was tempting fate with that bold declaration. While driving to work this morning, I shrieked, which is not to be confused with being Shreked. Shreked is when you launch a fish-killing fart at the lake. When you catch fish that way, they have a slightly pungent, but not unappealing, taste. Hey, you use rod and reel if you want to. I catch my limit by eating my famous black bean chipotle chili the night before I go for a swim in the lake. As the great philosopher, Steven Wright, once said, “There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.” I cross that line every time I wet a hook. Did I mention that I like fish better than 
fishing?
Anyway, back to the shriek. I would not say that I screamed. It was definitely a shriek. You may be asking, “Come on, Doug. What’s the difference?” The volume. When my wife got the bug stuck in her hair, it was so loud that the neighbor’s car alarm went off from the sound waves penetrating the brick walls of our house. You can only imagine the brain damage it caused me standing a mere three feet away. The noise coming from the depths of my scared and scarred soul was only loud enough to startle the trucker a quarter mile behind me.
Let’s put everything in perspective. My wife screamed at a bug. I only shrieked at a lightning bolt and thunder crash eight feet away from my car. There is a remote possibility I may be underestimating the distance. Okay, it was nine feet away, but that is still too close.
After my shriek and an involuntary exclamation about sanctified fecal matter, I noticed how it felt. There was a shock wave that penetrated the glass and aluminum of my Malibu. It was like an electromagnetic wave tried to rattle my brain.
“Too late!” I said to the lightning. “My brain has been rattled since birth and the scream two days ago maxed out the damage.”
When I told my wife about the near-miss of the lightning strike, she was worried. It wasn’t the lightning as much as her totally baseless claim that I exaggerate situations with humorous, poetic license causing God to target me for making certain individuals seem more terrified of the insect population than is appropriate. Crazy, right?
I laughed off her silly notions. On an unrelated topic, does anyone have a lightning rod for sale?