My mom and four sisters and I were all sitting around eating pancakes. Then we heard sirens going off. Out one window, the sky was totally clear. But in the other direction it was really black.

We went down to the basement, where my bedroom was. Then the electricity went out, and my mom got scared. We got onto my bunk beds, covered up with cushions from the couch, and all sang a hymn. You could hear this rumbling noise, like a big train. It got louder and louder and louder. We couldn’t even hear ourselves sing. And all of a sudden, it stopped. The tornado was gone. We went upstairs and tried the door to the kitchen, but it wouldn’t open. The ceiling had fallen in! The door to the garage was open, so we went outside. Some houses were gone. There were just cement slabs with people coming out from their basements. Pretty soon my dad got home from his store, which had been flattened. It’s amazing that in our whole town no one died. I remember seeing a car up in a tree. But the strangest thing was that a week later I was in a park and found a half-broken Nintendo game with our last name written on it! The tornado had carried our game clear across town.

After that we wore shirts that said “I SURVIVED THE BIG ONE.” Now I’m 14, and the tornado is the only thing I can remember about the first grade!