When I was quite young, I'm guessing about 6, there was a tornado warning in our county so we were in the basement until it passed. However since I was so young, I made a connection between tornato and potato. So I started wondering why a potato swirling around on the ground was so dangerous. I was picturing a large potato bumping into things on the ground!

Kristen

When I was little I was convinced that I was Dorothy Gale from "The Wizard of Oz". I live in the midwestern United States and we get tornados frequently, but I wasn't afraid of them at all. When we were put under tornado warnings I would run out side and sing "somewhere over the rainbow" hoping that the people of Oz would hear me (their beloved Dorothy) and bring me back to see them.

Dorothy

(Stepdaughter, at age 7, when she came to live with us)

"Did you know that if you throw a pebble in a volcano it will explode?"

Took a lot of convincing that her 9 yr old pal wasn't the smartest in the world.

S

When I was about four years old, I remember my family was always talking about hurricanes coming, because a few years before, hurricane Hugo had hit us and they were waiting for the next big one. I didn't remember Hugo because I was little then, but when hurricane season came and they showed the satelite views of the hurricanes on the news, I thought that when a hurricane came, I could look at the window and see the exact same round, white image from the TV rolling down the street, and that it would be about ten feet high and harmless. So, to everybody's shock, I always kept repeating that I wanted a hurricane to come so that I could see it. It wasn't until a few years later, when hurricane George hit Puerto Rico straight on, that I stopped believing that, realizing that a hurricane was much worst than I thought and why everybody in the island is so affraid of them.

Romy

I used to believe a tornado was a omato flying around and wondered why people were afraid of them.

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 inside each volcano there was a guy who'd press a button to make it erupt.

Jim, UK

When I was little, I read or someone told me that the sun will eventually burn the earth and then the whole world would then become cold because there was no more sun. That bothered me so I tried to think of a really good plan to save everybody. What I thought about was building a big huge refrigerator and have everyone in it. We'll have all the food we want and everyone would live!!

Pamela B. (California)

I used to believe that when there was an earthquake, rocks would fall from the sky.

Nai

Until I was in 3rd grade, I used to always make sure that I slept with my back facing the window during tornado season, even though tornades were fairly uncommon in my area, they still happened, so I wanted to be sure that a tornado didn't happen while I was sleeping and facing the window, because glass pieces would fly into my eyes and blind me!

Of corse, I think if there were a tornado while I was sleeping, I'd know, and my window and where I slept on my bed where about 8 feet apart...

Amanda

When I was a little boy, I slept on my side with the pillow between my arm and head. I use to believe that when I put my head on my pillow I could hear the rustling of the poly foam. I that it was the sound of an impending earthquake. I would not be able to sleep until I rolled over and did not hear the sound any longer.

J Kelly

When i was little my imagination was and still is very vivid. so i had a huge fear of Natural disatars and i would literally see lava flowing outside my house i used to get so scared to where i couldnt breathe.

Brie

when i was growing up, my best friends name was allison, which coincidentally is also on the hurricane name list. allison once went out of town, and a hurricane hit the east coast, also named "Allison", and the news reporters would always say her name and sounded very concerned. i would cry for hours in front of the television, hoping to see her and see if she was okay, because i somehow was convinced that she had a really bad cold and was in dire need of help.

Jenny

I was very young in 1989. One of my earliest memories, growing up in the Charlotte, NC, area was when hurricane Hugo devastated that city in September of 1989. Then the very next month, with Charlotte still far from completely recovered from hurricane Hugo, a major earthquake hit the San Francisco / Oakland area (perhaps best remembered as the earthquake that interrupted the first game of the World Series that year!). With our electricity in Charlotte not long restored from hurricane Hugo, we were watching on television reports of the devastation in the San Francisco Bay area. For me at that time, the name "Hugo" became so associated with natural disaster generally that I often found myself calling the earthquake "Hugo". People were surprised and amused when they found out that some of my references to "Hugo" meant the California earthquake rather than the hurricane on our side of the country. For quite some times afterwards I puzzled as to why earthquakes don't have names as hurricanes do!

Erica

When I was younger, I thought that a hurricane was a big spaceship looking thing( kinda like a submarine) that had 3 big holes on the bottom of it that opened and closed and had long benches on both sides where people could sit. I thought that when it struck, it would suck the people up into it and when i heard people talking about sending blankets and food to hurricane victims, that we would place boxes of the items where the spaceship was and it would suck the boxes right up.

Danielle

When I was in 4th grade, almost every kid in my class was convinced that the peninsula of Florida would sink into the ocean by the year 2000.

Anon

I used to believe that tornadoes were potatoes. Whenever there was a tornado warning I thought Mr. Potatoe head was walking around stomping on houses.

sm