In the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, I remember life going on just as it had regularly. The storm was out there, brewing, lurking, but that wasn’t an uncommon event during the late summer months along the Gulf Coast.\r\n The Saturday before the storm, I reported to work at Best Buy in Metairie. I really didn’t have to; my supervisor called me early in the morning to tell me that attendance that day wasn’t mandatory, even though I was scheduled to work. But the store had to be storm proofed, so I drove out there to wrap electronics in clear plastic and place sandbags around every entrance. It was a slow day, as was expected, with very few customers; almost everyone in the area had either evacuated or shut themselves in. I remember not being too particularly worried. For some reason, I had a hard time believing the hurricane was as bad as everyone said it was.\r\n The next morning, I got a call from my mother asking me to come home and evacuate with them. Whatever, it wasn’t going to be a big deal, but my mother has the potential to be the hysterical type, and to appease the part of her that still thinks I’m ten years old, I went over there. My dad asked if he could use my Blazer to evacuate us, since it’s a large vehicle. I needed sleep, and since he agreed to drive and the back seats fold down, I agreed. Besides, he was going to pay for gas. \r\n My parents love animals, and they would be damned if they left their 4 cats and 2 ankle-biting dogs at home to fend for themselves in a storm. Guess who got to hang out with them in the back?\r\n We shoved off at about 9 am, not sure where we were going, as long as it was in the general direction of north. It’s strange, I’ve lived in St. Charles Parish for nearly two thirds of my life, but I’ve never realized how beautiful the area was until I traveled it completely through it. Maybe I soaked it all in because, somewhere in the back of my mind, I envisioned the Bonet-Carre Spillway just swallowing it all up, never to be seen again. The drive down Highway 90 was unbelievably long, and extremely uncomfortable in the back.\r\n Our first stop was in Baton Rouge. We got some food there at a Burger King, gassed up, and headed towards Shreveport. I think my dad just enjoyed driving around, personally. He was raised in the backwaters of St. John Parish, so he has more of a respect for the purity of the natural state of Louisiana than I do (or did at the time).\r\n We finally made it to Shreveport somewhere around 6 pm, and of course, we couldn’t find a hotel room anywhere. The only best option was a shelter that was set up at LSU Shreveport, which the radio said had room for about three hundred more people at the time, along with kennels for animals And they had food; bonus. So we get there, and it looked like a refugee camp. People were sleeping on the floor on air mattresses and big cushions supplied by the American Red Cross. My parents , being as stubborn as they are, refused to sleep in the gymnasium, and opted to sleep in my car, with my engine running and air conditioner at full blast. Sure, why not? I went in and signed up, which they made everyone do in case relatives came looking for people, and sure enough, my lucky streak continues as it has my entire life and the last mattress was taken by the person who came in ahead of me. I did get a nice paper thin blanket to sleep on, however, and was given a spot right in the middle of the gym. I tried reading for a while to get myself sleepy, but that didn’t work. It was just too noisy for comfort. Figuring my parents had the right idea for once, I went to sleep in the car with them.\r\n The next morning we awoke and went to IHOP. It was my first time at an IHOP, ever, and it was rather enjoyable. At least it was real food. The rest of the day was uneventful; I slept like I had never slept before, and sweated away what felt like half my body weight in the oven that is the back of my SUV. I did get a few chapters of reading done here and there, since I figured I would have to catch up with school once I went back. By this time, the radio was already broadcasting horror stories about the devastation being caused in New Orleans, but I figured it was all exaggerations and ratings-grabbers.\r\n The next day came, the Tuesday after the storm. It went along really slow, as usual, nothing important happened. My parents finally reached their breaking point early that evening and decided we should go home and see what was left. That’s just how they are. So we headed out, and meandered across the state yet again. When we finally reached the St. James Parish border, state police officers told us we couldn’t go in. We told them we live in St. Charles Parish, and he told us there was nothing left of St. Charles Parish. This of, course, made my parents want to get back home with more determination. We drove around to find a hotel for the night, though. The only one open had just one room left, with no electricity and no flushing toilet, all for the economic price of $290 a night! Joy. My dad, of course, said he would rather sleep in the car, and although he didn’t mention it, this meant with my engine running all night again.\r\n One good thing about having a dad who was raised in the country is that he knows every dirt-paved back road in the state. We found a few that weren’t patrolled and used them to get back into St. Charles Parish. It didn’t look so bad on the drive in, just some trees torn out of the ground and some broken telephone poles. We finally made it back to the old hovel and found that it didn’t get much damage at all. The roof was missing some shingles, there were a few basketball sized holes in the roof, some rain had gotten in and ruined the carpet, and the mailbox was half a block down the street. But it was standing. I figured it couldn’t be so bad everywhere else, until we pulled the old portable television out of storage and saw some of the early images of post-Katrina New Orleans (we had a generator running, so we could have some fans to beat the heat.\r\n We lived off of some MREs a neighbor had given us for about 4 days before the power came back on. It was another week until we got cable up and running, so I was lucky I brought my Xbox along to salvage my sanity.\r\n Sometime around mid September I received word that Best Buy was going to open soon (this was around September 12th, I think) I showed up, with about 12 of my fellow co-workers, and we cleaned the place up and moved some stuff around. Despite the damage in the surrounding area Best Buy survived with only a little carpet damage. We stocked the store in no air conditioning for about a week or two before we opened to the public. Only 27 of the original 160 workers we had before the storm reported back to work, so we knew we had a long and painful, but profitable, road ahead of us. Since we opened, I’ve only had one day off and have been working 10 to 12 hour days. It’s been brutal, but fun, believe it or not.\r\n I found out that my group of close friends from UNO made it out okay, even though half of them are scattered around different parts of the state. My family made it through as well, even though some cousins of my dad died in the storm. I really do consider myself lucky, and am thankful for every day that passes.