The medley of wind and rain battered the windows of my bedroom, and with every new onslaught, my whole house groaned with fatigue. And as the storm raged on, I was thoroughly immersed in the world of online gaming, remaining ever oblivious of the F4 tornado with its eye locked onto me, just minutes away.

“Shoot!” The power went out. My blank monitor jiggled slightly from the shockwave of my fist hitting the desk with anger. My phone’s flashlight leading the way, I stepped out of my room and stopped in the hallway, gawking at what I saw through the large window in front of me. A tree in our front yard was bent over further than a professional limbo dancer, and I was sure it would snap.

My dad’s car sped into the driveway and almost collided with the garage door. He flung the door open and sprinted to the house, shielding his face from the wind like he was sneezing into his elbow. He slid inside, not bothering to lock the door and yelled to me and my mom with urgency in his voice, “Hey! We need to get to the basement, there’s a tornado!”

Rushing out of the bedroom adjacent from mine, my mom frantically started pulling framed pictures of the family off the walls and piling them up in her arms, simultaneously pushing me towards the stairs as she moved down the hallway. “Wait. Let me get something from my room.” I was intentionally vague, knowing that she wouldn’t have let me take my 25lb gaming PC. I hugged it against my body and ran downstairs moments before a small rock shot into my room at deadly speeds, demolishing a window and punching through a layer of drywall. I followed my dad, carrying our shaking dog, down the stairs and into the basement, as our house slowly disintegrated above us.

I was aware that my parents would think I was stupid for taking my computer, but I was confident that I’d made the right choice. Stored on my computer is every word I have ever typed for school and every picture that my phone was too full to hold. My academic life and my social life both revolve around my computer, as I use it for my homework and for playing games with my friends in the evenings. Aside from that, I’m sentimentally attached to my computer too. It’s the only PC I’ve ever built myself, and I’d spent countless hours researching components and assembling it, making it not just a materialistic thing, but also the most personal thing I own.