The Hurricane Series: Part 2 - When Real Life Meets Fiction

Hurricane Ike

We have all used experiences in our lives as fodder for our stories, often times using a situation exactly how we remember it. More often than not, however, we have to trim some edges and add some of our own to make the scene fit.

There is a temptation in this use of real life in our fiction, and Hurricanes Gustav and Ike reminded me of it. When I was a freshman in high school, our principal Mr. Wayne Coleman got on the intercom at the end of one school day and announced that, because of Hurricane Andrew, the school would be shut down for the next day or so. Our P.E. locker room erupted with joy. We were a bunch of near-sighted teenagers who apparently hadn’t heard the hurricane part of his announcement. And we certainly hadn’t anticipated having to miss three weeks of school. All we heard was that we were off. Our precious time could now be spent doing something we actually wanted to do.

How foolish and in need of guidance we were. We got that guidance not one minute after the announcement. Mr. Coleman, a tall, imposing figure of a man, walked into that locker room and needed to say absolutely nothing to quiet us down. Looking back, I suspect we knew before our principal spoke why we were in trouble.

Mr. Coleman was angry, but it was not uncontrolled rage. I remember his firm tone even today, and I can see him in my mind teaching us young, foolish teenagers a lesson about being human: People should never find joy in the misfortunes and sufferings of others, no matter what days we got to spend in front of a television instead of in the classroom.

Hurricane Andrew crushed my hometown, leaving us without power for several weeks and making us all wish we were back in school. We would have gladly gone to school those days if it meant we could have our comfort of living back. I have tried to teach my own classes this valuable lesson, and I know that it has reached some, especially many of the seniors I taught as 11th graders last year. But I was disappointed when just the other day, after I had told my classes the story about my high school principal and his lesson, that many of the student body erupted much like we did in that locker room sixteen years ago this month when it was announced at a Wednesday night football game that we would be missing school on Friday. It stirred up my own selfishness and what I would have been capable of had Mr. Coleman not addressed our mistake that day.

I wonder what a Cameron or Galveston resident would say if shown a video of our community’s collective cry of joy that Wednesday night.

I wonder if all of those students who were cheering at the football game, who got several feet of water in their homes, would go back and take on the terrible burden of an 8 a.m.-2:40 p.m. day if they could have their homes and sense of stability back.

I wonder if that local family who met a fatal tragedy on the highway while evacuating for Ike would have sacrificed just one day of school to have their family members alive and well.
I agree with my old principal. I think it is important that people not rejoice nor capitalize on the misfortune of others. These real-life happenings give us a glimpse of the temptation we fiction writers face. Sure, one of the gifts we writers have is the ability to recognize the creative potential in any real-life situation. But with that gift comes a responsibility. In order to keep our work noble, we must not openly capitalize on others’ suffering and misfortune, else we run the risk of selling our souls just to write a story.

The Hurricane Series: Part 1 - Whispers in the Storm

Jeff LeJeune is the author of The Final Chase and Postmarked Baltimore. After a deadly disease during college redirected the course of his life, Jeff became a teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, LA where he was recently named a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.