Wednesday, February 17, 2010

FEAR OF FLYING--THINGS part 1

There is probably a whole generation of children who were traumatized by The Wizard of Oz movie.
I was one of them. I saw that Kansas tornado sucking up Dorothy’s home and was never the same.

Funnel clouds just don’t happen where I grew up. Micro bursts, dust storms, yes. Big spinning winds, not so much. That did not stop the nightmares. I had dreams of looking out the window of our little farm house and seeing a dozen twisters headed our way. I would wake up in the night in my nest on the top bunk to find myself surrounded by little black tornados. I swatted them down with my pillow until I woke myself up.

It did not help that the grandmother that babysat me had a reproduction of “Tornado over Kansas” by John Steuart Curry hanging over her sofa. That picture still gives me the heebie jeebies.

I learned I needed to take cover in a low place in the event of a twister. So I practiced running the hundred yards to a concrete pipe that formed a bridge for a ditch. By the time I got too big to fit in that pipe I’d outgrown the worst of my dread of tornados.

By the way, lilapsophobia is the name of the phobia relating to the fear of hurricanes or tornadoes.

6 comments:

Butternut Squash said...

Part 1? Hmmm, I wonder where this is going? Scary, I still dread tornadoes.

Flea said...

I LOVE weather. Hurricanes (I grew up watching them), tornadoes (living in Tulsa is SO much fun!), blizzards (haven't lived through too many of those). Weather rocks.

Krista said...

I hate all those "natural disaster" type movies! Hot lava, tidal waves, tornadoes, fire spreading! We have a weather man on tv here that I'm even more afraid of because he has a really high pitched voice and the more excited he gets the higher it goes! I avoid that channel at all costs! Squeekaphobia!

frayedattheedge said...

Fortunately we don't get tornadoes here - just watching them on disaster movies is enough for me!!

Linda Sue said...

lilasophobia sounds like such a pretty name, maybe for a little Italian girl living in a vineyard or under the city in the catacombs. It does not sound like wind. When I saw Dorothy go up into the air I thought "COOL!" I want to do that!No fear- but I did have a hiding place in the cedar chest underneath the stairs in case the Nazis came...they would never think to look in there!

DayPhoto said...

I find tornadoes extremly frightening and we don't have them in my part of Colorado.

Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com