Last night at a few minutes after two a.m. a lightning flash produced a crack of thunder so strong that our house shook.
Those who know me would probably tell those who don’t that I’m a pretty tough
old guy who at age 62 can still go outside in 95 degree heat and mow close to an acre of lawn in under an hour and a half…
- that I’ve been known to continue to mow our lawn even with multiple wasp bites…
- that neighborhood dogs won’t bite me because I can stare them down with a green-eyed steely gaze.
So, yeah, I’m not a wimp.
Well, I’m not a wimp unless a big thunder storm is blasting away around me.
Then I turn into a quivering 67 inch mass of warm jelly.
You see, as much as my pride in being a tough old bird hates to admit it…
… Thunder storms scare me half to death.
I don’t like the noise, I hate the shaking house, I tremble thinking about strong winds blowing trees over on our car in the driveway, and flashes of really intense lightning are enough to make me think about adult diapers.
Seriously, I’m not exaggerating too much at all with the paragraph I just wrote.
Storms scare me.
It’s that simple.
They bring fear out in me the way the same way a hot flame brings out invisible ink on a sheet of paper.
So, anyway, last night this storm rolls in just after two in the morning, shakes the house, wakes me up out of a sound sleep, and starts to scare the crap out of me.
But do I curl into a ball of fear and whine and complain about it to my life partner of almost 40 years now?
Heck, no.
Well, actually, I do give her a poke to wake her up.
And I do then babble about how “I’m really scared of this one, baby,” for a few minutes.
But my wife laughs at me, as she’s done every time we’ve ever had a storm roll in from the west, tells me to relax, and then she rolls over and goes right back to sleep.
To sleep!
With white flashes of lightning arcing every few seconds and thunder shaking the house so hard our Australian Cattle Dog Pepper has jumped into bed with us for a little security.
Happily, I know what to do during these intense North Carolina thunderstorms.
To kill my fear and maintain my sanity, I pop my EarthLeaves CD into the CD player, jack the volume up a notch or two, wrap the headphones around my ears, and then lay back down on the bed and chill out to the relaxing and body-slowing EarthLeaves CD experience.
This is the same thing I do every time we have a really intense thunderstorm around here.
And I also use the CD to slow me way down when fear feelings about one thing or another upset my serenity.
I hope fear isn’t a big part of your life, but if it is I have an audio tool you can use that’s guaranteed to wipe out fearful thoughts while relaxing you as deeply as you’ve probably ever relaxed in your life.>
And for this week’s special offer, you can obtain a copy of my EarthLeaves CD for a 30% discount.
For full details on this special deal that expires at midnight this coming Wednesday, hurry over to…
Chet,
I just love your stories and although I’m sorry about your fear of thunderstorms, your story was my smile of the day!! (I could just picture what you were going through) That’s therapy of one sort or another in itself!
Have a great day and weekend Chet and keep those headphones turned up and handy!
JC
Greetings!
Down here in the “Lightning Capital” of the USA – Florida – we have lots of “Terror Storms” -aka- thunderstorms. What we DON’T DO is turn electronics on!!! Lightning follows electrical circuits; just 3 days ago I was washing dishes, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of the oddest aegean blue, fat, fuzzy lightning outside the door, which began to “sizzle” our phone and DSL lines… had anyone been on the phone, it would have been a disaster, and its am old-fashioned land-line, a simple phone line!!! 2-days to fix…
I have seen lightning pass through an open window, travel in front of me, stop at the TV, and leave as it entered.
I have had, several times, lightning strike right next to me. Indeed, lightning is attracted to me… so much so, that since it has never actually struck me – I no longer fear it – yet definitely respect it.
So the point of all this is:
1) Turn off all appliances (even the AC, so its not struck) -and-
2) Don’t work with, or stand near water.
Lightning is fire, and fire is composed of Salamanders; sentient elementals, who can/will either terrorize you, or play with you. Until you decide which relationship you will have with them – please don’t hook electronics directly to your head during lightning storms…
Peace,
Carolyn
Oh boy — we had that T-storm in Boone, NC, too! But, it’s our 90-pound German Shepherd/mix whose afraid of the thunder. And, my husband had an all-day meeting in Winston-Salem starting at 9:00AM the next day, which meant I *had* to find a way to keep the big baby quiet! I spent an uncomfortable night on the couch (oh, and I had gone to bed w/a migraine, and it was still pounding way): holding the leash I’d attached to Rex’s collar, and insisting that he stay laying down on the floor next to me. :-/ I doubt he’d listen to your CD, though I sure he would!! I tried the herbal tablets we’d gotten from the vet, plus 2 types of homoepathic remedies, to no avail.
A friend posted to me on facebook the next day about something called an “anxiety wrap” that works well for her dad’s dog. (The website is
anxietywrap.com , just in case anyone else is dealing w/the same issue.) It looks very promising, and I’m hoping my order of one will come before out next big thunderstorm!! (I’ll let you know if it works — maybe they could special order one for humans.
Hoping for quieter nights – for your sake and mine!
-Catherine
Hey Chet, I’m with you on this one. I’ve never been a fan of thunder storms, but have put on a brave front since my children were born, because I did not want to convey any of my irrational fears to them. Now that my children are both adults I’m slipping back into old habits. We too have had some severe thunder storms over the summer and I have grabbed my pillow and curled up on the floor of the centre hallway in my house. I can close all the doors so that I cannot see the lightning flashes from where I am lying, and although I don’t go back to sleep, I can relax in that location until the storm passes. My two cats usually curl up beside me to keep me company!
I own your Earthleaves cd, so I should dig it out and use it specifically during thunderstorms!
Ruth
Wish you may be a Muslim and recite “Ayat al Kursi ” That will always protect you from fear:
Thanks everyone for the good comments. I should have mentioned in my story that the CD player I use runs on batteries, so there’s no fear about my brain exploding from listening to EarthLeaves during a storm!
Chet
I actually have a very different story about storms. When I was a little girl, my Granma used to tell me that thunderstorms happen when the Gods are angry and the lightening kills all the bad people. I always used to pray that my school teacher who used to give us lotsssssss of homework get stuck by the lightening, only to find her, at my dismay, still alive the next morning. And even now that I am a big girl and I dont really believe in this, whenever there’s a storm I still pray that all the people who ever gave me hard time be struck by lightening
A clarification about electronic wiring in a home, and the high-powered electrical discharge of lightning:
For a long time, home builders and electricians have developed codes to ground the electrical lines in a home. Steeples and other high points of a home are guarded by lightning rods, also grounded.
Wiring for Internet and phone lines operate independently from the electrical system of a home design. Oftentimes these electrical lines are installed in a rush, because they are low voltage lines. But they constitute copper conductors going from outside the home to the inside, and should be also grounded. Plugging a CD player to the A/C receptacle of a home is NOT dangerous because this wiring is grounded. In addition, the output from an amplifier to a pair of headphones is protected by the unit, specially if the unit is connected to the house A/C current through an adapter (formally called a rectifier), which converts A/C current to safe DC miliamp current.
Phone lines and Internet wiring are indeed dangerous in a lighting storm, and people should be aware that proper installation is a necessity, before it is too late. You can be listening to a soothing CD (which I will buy, by the way) on a battery operated player and headphones, and still be shocked by lightning entering your home through poorly installed copper wiring.
We never have thunder or electrical storms in Hawaii. We have tropical storms, but without lighting…. at least none I can remember.
thanks,
Hello I hate thunderstorms as well
When I was a child my parents always went fishing, when there was a thunder coming up because it was a perfect time to catch eels.
So I was hidig under the table scared like hell.
I just turned 60 and I stille hate thunder.
Actually we are expecting a storm tonight in the north of Denmark.
Thanks for enligtening me from over there.
Mette Sandland