Not a weatherman

 I AM IN trouble with a Lab Brat. Her name is Ashleigh. I gave her a wrong weather forecast yesterday.

"I have a bone to pick with you," she said, after it hailed golf ball-sized pieces of ice and rain flooded roads yet again yesterday afternoon. "You said it wasn't going to rain."

I was loading up my Blessing vehicle for the afternoon Hannibal run around 3:15 yesterday when Ashleigh and another Lab Brat walked by. They were on break and decided to take a walk. All day it had been sticky and threatening, but the rain kept sliding north. Now the sky to the west was black and the air was still - sure signs of nasty weather on the way.

"Is it going to rain?" Ashleigh said. 

"Nope," I said. "Wanna drive to Hannibal with all this stuff in the back?"

"Hahaha," she said, staring dubiously at the black sky and presumably rolling her eyes as she kept walking.

A little after 3:30, I was on Ill. 57 near 12th Street when all hell broke loose. The golf balls pounding the metal roof of my van sounded like bombs going off. I couldn't see because of the rain and the wind blowing debris sideways. So I  pulled over and waited it out, and waiting is something a lab courier isn't very good at doing. After a 15-minute wait, I kept going through the driving rain

I finally got back to 11th Street in Quincy more than half an hour late. Were the Lab Brats concerned about me driving through Armageddon?  

"You were wrong about the rain," Ashley said.

"It rained?" 

"Yes! We went outside and we watched it!" she said. She was very excited.

Look. We all want to be Rich Cain and try to get the forecast right. But let's face it, we can't always be like Rich, or his amazing daughter Audra, who took guitar lessons from me and is a rock star. But that's besides the point.

I just drive through it, splash through it, pray my windshield doesn't crack when being bombarded by hail, slow down and let idiots in large trucks roar past me on highways, or pull over when I can't see.

I'll try to be a better weather guy for the Lab Brats. Or give them simple advice, like, "Stay inside when it's storming."