Like many of you have probably been doing, I’ve been racing around the last few days cleaning my house to prepare for company. The phrase “like a white tornado” kept creeping into my thoughts only I seemed to be moving like a GREY tornado. My interpretation of that means an older slower version of a cleaning wonder. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if a “white” tornado is racist. Go ahead and laugh, strange things enter my head when I’m inhaling those cleaning products.

I seized the opportunity to sit down at the computer and prove how silly my question really was. The initial information provided online was about a cleaning product, Ajax, and a slogan used to advertise it in 1972. No wonder I thought about this phrase;, that’s when my son was born and I was “into” cleaning. This link should take you to a video of one of the commercials used for Ajax.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vurmg1yffg  The commercial could lead you to believe that the product makes cleaning go faster.  That’s when, at the rate I was moving, I was sure I was a grey tornado this week.

I was still curious about white tornadoes and found more information which might have produced the idea behind the Ajax slogan. I learned about white tornadoes from http://www.chaseday.com/tornadoes.htm : A tornado can appear white when it is “front lit” by the sun. Since most of them are photographed with the sun behind them, they look black or dark grey. (Perhaps being a grey tornado isn’t that bad.) You may also see a white cloud of water rotating into a froth at the base of the tornado. I’m sure you’ve really been wondering about that for quite a while.

The picture at the top shows my version of what might be left behind by a white tornado. The “ditch” in it reminds me of what I was taught as a girl in tornado alley Oklahoma. If you are out when you see a tornado coming and you can’t get to shelter, lie down as flat as possible in the ditch beside the road. I’m thankful I never had to do that.

I’m also thankful for readers like you who go all the way to the end of my entries, even those that are silly like this one.  Happy Thanksgiving!