It's to the best of our knowledge from PRX.

I'm Anne Strange Hamps.

Have you ever had an experience so unlikely, so dramatic, so trippy, that you struggle to explain it to yourself, let alone to other people?

I had just pulled into the parking lot of my Houston synagogue

with my four-year-old and my two-year-old sons in the car.

It had been a beautiful late summer day up until that point.

When the sky just opened up and the storm just came out of nowhere.

For Elizabeth Crone, it happened in an instant. She tells the story in her memoir changed in a flash.

I told Jeremy, my four-year-old, to get out of the She tells the story in her memoir, it changed in a flash.

I told Jeremy, my four-year-old, to get out and run to the building.

There was an awning there over the door, and I told him to wait there for us.

And then I climbed over the seat in the car to get Andy, my two-year-old, out of his car seat.

Got my umbrella, pulled it down really close to my head, and we started walking.

After a few steps, I felt I felt it. A crackling in the air. I can remember glancing at my left hand and noticing that my wedding ring was touching the metal shaft of the umbrella.

A tiny little tine branching off a larger bolt of lightning touched the tip of the umbrella.

And this only served to paralyze the muscles in my arm and my hand,

and I couldn't let go of the umbrella.

And then the larger bolt hit.

It was like being inside of an exploding bomb.

Andy immediately started screaming and had his hands glued to his ears.

Jeremy was also screaming as he ran back out toward us in the storm and grabbed his

brother's hand and started pulling him toward the building.

...