Like with most things I am terrified of, I can pinpoint the exact moment lightning began to scare the bejesus out of me.
I was in my early teens, and the mother used to teach in a school that ended a good hour after the brother and I got home. So as the responsible elder child, I was in charge of making sure the brother and I changed after getting home, ate our lunch, and (ideally) started on our homework by the time she got home. Which of course meant that we would get home, put on the TV, dawdle over our lunch, and then squawk and change five minutes before she would actually get home. (Oh, like you didn't know this, Ma.)
Good times.
Anyway, one afternoon, we were having our lunch while watching TV. I can't remember if a storm was already ongoing, or if it sprung up out of nowhere, but I do remember that our sofa was against the windows, and the TV screen faced the balcony door. And that it got darker as the afternoon progressed. And suddenly, out of the blue, a streak of lightning flashed across our TV screen, all the way from across that long living room of ours. And I'm pretty sure I grabbed my poor younger brother and screamed.
Not so good times.
I love rain, and I'm quite fond of thunderstorms. But lightning, to put it bluntly, frightens the crap out of me.
Last night, as I left work, after hearing about tornado warnings coming and going in various parts of the city, I looked up at the sky and saw lightning continuously flashing in the sky several miles away. In the direction I was headed. A part of my brain said it looked a lot like when the particle accelerator exploded on The Flash, but the rest of my brain kept having flashbacks to that afternoon all those years ago.
I was in my early teens, and the mother used to teach in a school that ended a good hour after the brother and I got home. So as the responsible elder child, I was in charge of making sure the brother and I changed after getting home, ate our lunch, and (ideally) started on our homework by the time she got home. Which of course meant that we would get home, put on the TV, dawdle over our lunch, and then squawk and change five minutes before she would actually get home. (Oh, like you didn't know this, Ma.)
Good times.
Anyway, one afternoon, we were having our lunch while watching TV. I can't remember if a storm was already ongoing, or if it sprung up out of nowhere, but I do remember that our sofa was against the windows, and the TV screen faced the balcony door. And that it got darker as the afternoon progressed. And suddenly, out of the blue, a streak of lightning flashed across our TV screen, all the way from across that long living room of ours. And I'm pretty sure I grabbed my poor younger brother and screamed.
Not so good times.
I love rain, and I'm quite fond of thunderstorms. But lightning, to put it bluntly, frightens the crap out of me.
Last night, as I left work, after hearing about tornado warnings coming and going in various parts of the city, I looked up at the sky and saw lightning continuously flashing in the sky several miles away. In the direction I was headed. A part of my brain said it looked a lot like when the particle accelerator exploded on The Flash, but the rest of my brain kept having flashbacks to that afternoon all those years ago.
