Stories from childhood
Thunder
Ever since I can remember, the sound of thunder scared me. No other sound in the world sounds as loud and unpredictable to me as thunder. Some people might say that there’s always a bolt of lightning before the sound of thunder, but not necessarily. If I don’t happen to see the lightning, then that thunderclap can be a total fright inducing surprise.
When I was around four years old, I devised a way to deal with my fear. I made up a story. There were some construction workers who drove these big yellow trucks and they wore the same yellow color raincoats. Whenever there was going to be a rainstorm, their job was to drive to the highest mountain and use their construction equipment to roll the biggest boulders that they could find down the mountainside. I convinced myself that thunder was the sound of those boulders rolling down the mountainside and it wasn’t anything to fear.
My mother worked for a company that rented construction equipment. I often got to visit her work and go play out in the yard. I saw all these big yellow machines and believed that they had the power to build highways and buildings. I met all these huge men who came into the rental store and believed that they could construct amazing houses and freeways with just their hands and some simple machines. I realize that I took something from my environment that represented strength and safety and used those symbols in my story to explain thunder.
Even at just four years old, I fell in love with the power of the story, myth, and legend. The stories we create to entertain ourselves, to explain nature, to alleviate our fears, and to express our cultural beliefs and values are important and meaningful. More importantly, it doesn’t matter if that story is factually true or not. The story still has power in our lives. My childhood is living proof of that. There is no group of construction workers who have a job to go up on a mountain and roll boulders down the mountainside every time it rains, but that story alleviated my fear of thunder during my childhood. Even today, when the rain comes down and I hear a loud thunderclap, thinking of those men rolling boulders makes me smile.
