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" Excerpted from The Oral History of 2013 in Esquire&amp;#039;s December 2013 edition, in newsstands now. MAY 20, 2:56 P.M. OKLAHOMA TORNADO CATHY WILSON, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, AGAPELAND LEARNING CENTER I thought it might get bad. Like thunderstorms. We were even saying we might be able to get out early. It could be an easy day. Then the first sirens went off. We had thirty-six kids\u2014infants, toddlers, twos, threes, and fours\u2014with teachers. My own grandson was in the building. He was nineteen months old at the time. Now, the sirens go off all the time. Nine times out of ten, it&amp;#039;s nothing. We have people stand outside and watch the skies. But we don&amp;#039;t take it lightly as far as the children&amp;#039;s safety. I got everybody in the bathrooms. We had mats that the kids sleep on for nap time beneath and on top of them. This one little boy, he wanted to read stories, because sometimes they go to the bathroom with a flashlight for story time. Teachers were singing songs to the kids, playing. Toddlers were crying underneath the mats. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s hot.&amp;quot; The sirens hit again. I believe it was hailing. I&amp;#039;m checking the windows, checking the doors. I started opening up closets, ripping out more and more cots, getting them to the bathrooms. I gave everyone extra padding. Coats, anything. &amp;quot;Put this on top of y&amp;#039;all and get down.&amp;quot; I walked to the front of the building. People were telling me different things, different weather channels saying different things, parents calling me. But not until I saw it\u2014then I knew. This was it. It was like something came upon the building. Complete darkness. I had a Red Bull that I was drinking. I set it down and I leaned over a little bit and looked out. It got eerie, completely calm. And so I walked to the front door, and the tornado was tearing up the 7-Eleven down the street. I started screaming, &amp;quot;This is it! It&amp;#039;s here! We are being hit! It&amp;#039;s outside the building!&amp;quot; Teachers started crying. The phone starts going off. The only place we had was restrooms. We had no place to go. And the meteorologist says, &amp;quot;If you&amp;#039;re not underground, you will not survive. This is a deadly tornado. You will die. If you&amp;#039;re not underground\u2014&amp;quot; I got in the bathrooms. I sat between the toilet and the sink, and I didn&amp;#039;t have anything to cover up with. I didn&amp;#039;t even think twice about it. I&amp;#039;m just praying, Please, God, let it hold. You can hear it. The glass shattering, things being ripped apart. You can hear it tearing the ceiling off. The teachers were crying, saying, &amp;quot;What is that? What is that noise?&amp;quot; All the drains\u2014you could hear the water being sucked out of the sewer lines, the toilets, like this gurgling. The pressure changed. It felt like your head was going to explode. There was so much pull in there, like cabin pressure times ten. It just hurts, your body kind of shrinking, kind of beside yourself, disoriented. And then the ceiling starts giving way\u2014ripping apart\u2014and I can see outside. This little girl Aria\u2014she&amp;#039;s four. She was underneath the mat. I don&amp;#039;t know if she moved or what, but I look up and she&amp;#039;s being lifted out of the bathroom. It was like she was still kind of lying down, kind of like levitating. So I&amp;#039;m holding on to the toilet, and I grab on to her leg, and she&amp;#039;s screaming, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t let me go! Don&amp;#039;t let me go!&amp;quot; And I said, &amp;quot;I won&amp;#039;t let you go. If you go, I go. We&amp;#039;re both going together, okay? I swear, I&amp;#039;m gonna take care of you, okay?&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s a pale child and she was bright beet red. And she&amp;#039;s just crying. &amp;quot;Please, please.&amp;quot; And I said, &amp;quot;I promise. I promise. I got you. I got you.&amp;quot; And the bathroom\u2014I can just see the tornado&amp;#039;s on top of us. The ceiling been gone, the roof been gone. The debris. I mean things just flying around. It just chewed away and chewed away and chewed away. And all of a sudden, it started moving on. The pressure changed. It finally got calm. I started to get up and out of the bathroom. I ran out and shut the door. The building was gone. We were completely outside. We could see the tornado heading to the bowling alley, just moving on, tearing other stuff up. I&amp;#039;m checking all my kids, and there&amp;#039;s not a scratch on anybody. One teacher, she came out behind me. She&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Where is my car?&amp;quot; It was way across the street, past the 7-Eleven, flipped upside down. The 7-Eleven was completely gone. Another one of my teachers, her purse had been in a closet adjacent to one of the bathrooms. They found it down the street wrapped around a telephone wire. My Red Bull\u2014the last thing I did was take a drink and set it down. It was still sitting there half empty. Not spilt or anything, just sitting on the desk.\u2014AS TOLD TO JESSIE KISSINGER "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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