nature

When I first learned about the hole in the ozone layer, I thought it was a big hole in the earth. I thought people were throwing thier trash in it and when they did a big earthquake would cause it to grow bigger.

I used to believe that rain had an odor. I was not until years later that I realized what I was smelling was the scent of water hitting the pavement, the smell of tar.

I grew up on a farm on eastern Long Island (New York). It had a large pond from which we pumped water for irrigating the crops. My father told me that I should never go near this pond because there were hundreds of poisonous, copperhead snakes there. Not wanting to be bitten by a copperhead, I always avoided the entire area. Of course, there are no poisonous snakes?copperhead or otherwise?found on Long Island. Yet, even though I now know there?s no danger of being bitten by a snake, going anywhere the pond still makes me nervous.

I used to believe that it rained on all the world until one day it rained on the street across from us and not on us.

When I was little, everything was alive (and to a certain extent, sentient): trees, all animals, of course; plants. This meant I needed to be gentle to living things as much as possible, and even if I had to kill something (cockroaches. Ticks. Mosquitos. Weeds.) that I'd do it with some degree of, I guess you'd have to call it consideration. Even inanimate things were alive. The universe was alive.

This is still true. It certainly does make life more interesting, fun, and at times, glorious, if everything around you can enjoy being there, too.

When I was little, I thought that when it rained, people in heaven were sitting on the edge of the clouds pouring buckets of water down to the earth below. I'm 28 now and still get that image from time to time.

I grew up in earthquake country (northern California). For some reason I always woke up in the night before earthquakes hit, some instinct gaind from having always been there with earthquakes happening so frequently. I though I caused the earthquakes, becasue I was awake, or rolled over, or pulled up the covers. I couldn't understand how I always woke up a good few minutes before they came.

When I was a child, I believed that the sun turned into the moon at night and that the moon became the sun during the day.

My mother told me that thunder was the sound of the giants bowling. If you listen, you can see why I fell for that one.

When I was about six or seven my friend Cristy and I used to build these giant sand castles in the sandbox. We would each get on one side then dig through until our hands touched. We believed that if we dug down from there we could get to the other side of the world.

I use to believe that the stars at night were peep holes and people in heaven were looking down through them to check on us here on earth!

I used to believe that pussywillows were pieces of my cat stuck to a tree, and that if you played with your belly button that your bum would fall off.

My mother told me when I was young that thunder was from God bowling!

Being from the Hudson Valley/Catskills region of New York, we were always told that a bad thuderstorm was Rip Van Winkle bowling!

this happened when i was quite small. it was during the rainy season when i asked my cousin (who wasn't really too old either) what exactly caused lightning. my cousin who had his own scientific beliefs told me that lightning was caused by god who was was sitting there above and clicking our photographs. needless to say whenever lightning struck, me and my other cousins would jump up and down hoping our's would be the best picture.

My brother once told me that lightning was the headlights of the 'batmobile' and thunder was those afterburner thingy also on the 'batmobile'.

Holy smokes Batman, it's raining out here...