I wrote this column for The Log post-Ivan in 2004. Even though Ida happily turned out to be a non-entity, I wanted to reprint it.

“I’m too young to die! I’m too good to die! I’m too me to die!” — Snoopy, in “Peanuts.”

Where does Hurricane Ivan get off reminding me that I’m not the center of the universe?
Intellectually, of course, I know I’m not, but in my gut, I’ve always felt that life is a movie, and I’m in the starring role. I’m constantly on-stage, I see the events of my life portrayed in much more detail than other people’s, my successes and failures interest me more than those of other characters. Aren’t those the hallmarks of a leading role?
So logically, when my story ends, it should be an end worthy of a star. Ideally, a happily-ever-after fade out before the credits roll: Me dying in my bed at 120, surrounded by my loving children and grandchildren and maybe even a couple of great-grandchildren, everything beautiful and moving.
If the script calls for death by hurricane instead, I expect a star’s heroic finish: The water rising around me as I selflessly drag a dozen Destin Elementary schoolchildren to safety from their overturned bus, then rescue their breathtakingly beautiful teacher (since it’s my fantasy, I’m casting Salma Hayek), then I sink beneath the waves gasping out some great dying line (“It’s a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done” — no, wait, someone’s already used that, haven’t they?).
Hurricanes don’t seem to grasp any of this: When they come ashore I’m not a star, I’m a nonentity they can squash without even noticing. If Ivan were Godzilla, I’d be one of the screaming nameless extras running through the Tokyo streets to escape getting stomped, the kind of role not even identified in the credits unless it’s as “Man crushed by falling concrete.”
That’s wrong on so many levels.
Even worse, the rest of the world reinforces this I-don’t-matter attitude. During my evacuation, I kept staring at the news, thinking how people all across America weren’t spending even an instant wondering what was happening to me. Instead, they were watching promos for the fall television season without thinking about whether or not I’d have cable, or a television (or for that matter, a house to put it in). It was as if 99 percent of the world didn’t know me, know about me, or even care about me. Don’t they realize I’m the star?
As things turned out, neither I nor my apartment suffered any damage, but that doesn’t make me feel any less insignificant. Seeing photos of Santa Rosa County, or damage reports from some of my friends (roof gone, car gone, house gone), I know my home’s survival has more to do with sheer random chance than my having a starring role in the universe.
God loves me, of course, but that’s security for my soul, not my body. God loves everybody, but that’s never prevented a large percentage of “everybody” dying nasty, brutish, undramatic, unpleasant deaths. Not deaths befitting a leading man. Intellectually, I’ve always known I’m vulnerable to being written out of the script early: I wear my bicycle helmet, I check out suspicious medical symptoms, I don’t run outside during hurricane-force winds. But does the universe have to rub it in how fragile and disposable it finds me?
I’d like to draw some inspiring moral from all this — stop and smell the roses, concentrate on spiritual things that don’t get washed away, move to a hurricane-free area, put plywood on the windows — but having the universe humble me doesn’t inspire me to insight, it simply makes me feel very small, and very scared.
And at the same time, very glad to be alive. Maybe my role is a smaller part of the film than I want to admit, but there’s a lot more footage I hope to appear in before the final reel.