disasters

As a child I was always frightened when we went camping, as we had to drive through a canyon to get to our usual spot. I was convinced a large rock was going to detach itself from the canyon wall and crush our car. I wasn't afraid of real canyon dangers, such as a flood or landslide, just a huge random boulder.

Still don't like canyons

I was under 5 years old when I learned that lava (VOLCANO LAVA) was actually really hot, molten rock.

I remember looking out my window and feeling REALLY scared because there was a big rock in the yard RIGHT BY MY ROOM! I always used to imagine it one day bubbling up or exploding, with the hot lava coming to get me in my sleep or something...

Sapphi

I grew up in Lassen National Park on Hwy 44 in California. I used to believe that the volcano would explode and erupt lava and pick up my house and send it down a hill on a river of molten lava....

Anon

When I was little, I was terrified of natural disaters like hurricanes and volcanoes. I asked my parents when I was really young if there could ever be an earthquake where we lived. They said no and gave me some kind of reason that I never remembered, but since then I always imagined that the people in our state had long ago placed this huge metal plate deep underground to prevent earthquakes, and I would sometimes wonder why places like California and Japan didn't do the same. I occasionally still have to remind myself that it's because of fault lines and not whether or not there are underground metal plates.

Chelsea

I used to believe that during an earthquake, little lawn gnomes were on little ladders, shaking my house. Like literally surrounding my house and they would just hug the house and shake shake shake.

k

When I was about 6 or 7 I watched that movie Volcano. I was really scared that a volcano would pop up in the middle of town and we would all die that I would run and hide whenever I heard a loud noise

Lily Brennan

When I was young, I was really interested in dinosaurs. My dad told me that they all died when a huge meteor hit the Earth. I got so scared that one would come from space and we would all die, that I would hide in the closet for protection every day, thinking that would save me.

Addison

When I was young I came to a conclusion after watching my mice run around in their wheel that the reason the earth goes around is because we walk on it. In other words, we stay in one spot and the earth moves underneath us. This theory worked well when it came to explaining earthquakes: They are cause by too many people walking in different directions at the same time.

Saskia K

When I was little, I never would have thought--not in a million years--that I would live to be 30 without a) being stuck in quicksand, b) having an encounter with hot lava, and c) having to break out of prison. No, I've had a boring life.

Sol

There was a relatively short period of time in my childhood where I was very paranoid about quicksand. I would avoid light spots in black pavement (small rocks, presumably) in order to not be sucked into quicksand!

Jennifer

As a child I used to believe that people can swim into the lava while it comes out of the volcano. I also had the image of a man diving into the lava.

dim

I live in California where we have frequent earthquakes. When I was four, I experienced my first one (the big '89 earthquake) while I was singing in the shower. Later on that evening my dad explained to me that when god doesn't like what you're doing, he makes earthquakes. He did a little demonstration of shaking a lego piece on a magazine until the lego piece fell off. Then it was bedtime and I couldn't go to sleep so I asked my mom for a glass of water. When she came back with the water, we had an aftershock which felt like our apartment building was tipping over. She sat down just as it stopped and for the longest time I thought that she stopped the building from falling with her weight. I ALSO thought that I was the cause of that earthquake because god hated my song, so for years I tried to remember that song I sang in the shower.

Anon

When I was six or seven, I read the Pompeii issue of National Geographic and became convinced that volcanoes were going to get me when I slept, though we lived nowhere near any. In fact, they were waiting outside my window, though if I looked outside they'd duck around back so I couldn't see them. A bad dream about fire or lava traveling along our fence up to the house was the kicker, and I remember I took the magazine outside and left it there at some point so it got ruined by rain. I was so worried about a friend who was going on a vacation to Washington because of Mt. Saint Helens, too.

My defenses against the volcanoes were always sleeping with my comforter over me, even in summer, and sleeping with a huge stuffed dog that would shoot... something, I guess... out of its nose to keep the volcanoes away. The habit of sleeping with the comforter always on lasted until I was at least fifteen or so, though the belief had long since passed...

Amanda

When I was younger, I went through this faze of being tarafied of naturle disasters. I believed that any natrul disaster could happen anyware. Where I live, the worst thing that could happen is a Ice Storm. THATS NOTHING!

Crazy Believer

When I was in kindergarten, a boy in my class told me that the rubber button-looking thing on the wall in the bathroom was an earthquake button. He said that if there was an earthquake, you push it in and it would keep the walls from falling down. It never occurred to me to question that, until many years later (I'm embarrassed to admit how old I was) when someone said something to me about the rubber doorstop. Before I could stop the words from coming out, I said, "Oh, that's what that is? I thought it was an earthquake button." Needless to say, I earned myself quite a lot of teasing for that one!

Amy

When I was about 5 or 6 my friend told me that if the weatherman said that there was a tornado, you had to be extra quiet because if you talk too loudly, the tornado would hear you and come after you and suck you up into the clouds. The only way to protect yourself was to fight the tornado (yes, punching and kicking) off and hope you win and scare it away.

We were what you call "special."

Savannah Dearest