disasters

When I was about 3 or 4 I tomato and tornado sounded the same to me. So one time my dad told me that there was a tornado warning so I went up to my mom and brother and said "Theres a tomato warning!!"

Anon

I used to belive that there was somewhat a high presure tomato soup groung inside the Earth, and that some times, when it became really hot, it would cause that soup to get released. That's what people called a volcano. I was four years at the time..

colari

I used to believe that every time there was an earthquake, the ground would split open and form huge cracks. And, if a person was unlucky enough to fall into one of these "cracks" he or she would fall forever and ever...never hitting bottom. Although I remember being fascinated with the notion of "forever" I lived in constant fear of earthquakes (and we lived in Kansas!)

kelly from kansas

I used to believe that earthquakes regularly opened up big cracks in the ground, people fell in, and they snapped shut again. Like a big clam made of earth and rocks. So I thought there should be a memorial for all the people who died suddenly in earthquakes. Some of them were probably the only casualties of little aftershocks, too.

blnkfrnk

When I was in the firt and second grade I used to think that a Tornadoe was a giant Tomatoe that came rolling through town crashing peoples houses.

Brittney

After studying meteors at school I was sure that a meteor was going to land on our house. After a week of sleepless nights my mum asked my teacher to tell us that this is very unlikely to actually happen.

Cath

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

i used to believe that an earthquakes' epicentre was where traumatised earthquake victims went after they had suffered an "eppy".

sam

I remember my mother standing on the porch saying "By the looks of those clouds, a tornado may coming." I waited for tomatoes to come down like rain.

Tonya

When I was little I used to believe tornadoes formed from those smokestacks at factories. Whenever I rode by them I'd always look away because I was afraid of tornadoes.

xoxo

air would soon finish in the world then humanity would be in trouble but only I knew this and I didn't want to panic the entire planet so I secretly tried to think of ways to save air only I would use.

Abdul

I used to belive that if a cloud hit the ground a tornado would appear in the size of that cloud.

i was terrified to see one from far away thinking it was going to hit the ground!

nahtiak

when i was 4 i thought an earthquake was an earth cake!

chardog

I used to belief that a hurricane was a giant crab that emerged from the sea (from time to time) and ate people.

BJ

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

I thought you could make an active volcano erupt just by dropping a bomb or grenade in the mouth of it. For some reason it didn't occur to me that if that was the case why hasn't some terrorist or someone set off a volcano that way?

Bootlebat

That hurricanes were big truckers who drove around causing damage because noone was big enough to stop them. This came from them having peoples names and seeing an image on TV of a trucker getting into a truck to clear some wreckage after a hurricane hit

Grant

I used to believe that the world was a snow globe that some little kid had in thier room in another universe and when the kid shook the snow globe it caused earthquakes and snow on earth.

Emma

To me, an 'earthquake' was a giant round stone, like a millstone or the big round stone in front of a Biblical grave. The 'earthquake' rolled on things and destroyed them.

joy

Earthquakes were when a huge cavernous crack opened in the earth. It swallowed everyone and everything near it, and then closed up again.

Cyn