Friday, March 13, 2009

When There Is Lightning

One of the main topics that people generally talk about is the weather. Among family, friends or even strangers. My Dad, whenever he smses me give me a weather update of his place - 'it's very hot today' or 'it rained today'.

Recently, the weather in Malaysia has been rather chaotic - hot as hell at one minute, and raining at the next. As I've more or less quit reading the newspaper and don't watch the news, I got to know last weekend (when I went back home) that there have been quite a number of landslides at Kuala Pilah due to the extremely heavy rain and strong wind.

Ipoh too has had it's share of funny weather. We had very bad rain yesterday and the day before yesterday. Both times, the rain started and stopped abruptly, but when it rained, it rained like the Gods were angry. A few places even got flooded after that short period of rainfall!

Yesterday's rain was accompanied by thunder and lightning, which reminded me of something that happened a long time ago.

I was 6 years old. I was staying with my cousins in Seremban, going to a kindergarden nearby. My parents would come visit me during the weekends and I would go back home during the holidays. I was the youngest among my cousins and I don't remember much, but then I do remember getting teased every now and then - happens to everyone, doesn't it?.

One of the things that my cousins told me was this - when lightning strikes, it always strikes the eldest child of the family (if the person is outdoors). I believed them, and being the eldest in my family, I would avoid going out of the house whenever there was lightning.

I have another Aunt who lived 2 doors away from the house I was living in. I used to go there almost every day to practice the piano since there wasn't a piano in the Seremban house (which is how we refer to the house we lived in last time).

As luck would have it, one day, after practising the piano, before I went back to the Seremban house, it started to rain + thunder + lighting. I was TERRIFIED!! What if I got struck by lightning? I can't stay in my Aunt's house because I had to go to kindergarden the next day and it was already late at night. Of course I did not mention this fear to my Aunt or my cousins - I didn't want anyone to laugh at me.

In the end, my Aunt decided that it was too dark for me to go back alone and told one of my cousin brother's to accompany me back home. I felt such relief when I saw that the cousin who is going to send me back is the eldest one in his family; my reasoning was this - since he is the eldest in the family and since he is older than me, then he is bound to get struck by lightning first. Inconsiderate, I know, but I was 6 years old!

Anyway, both of us managed to get to our respective homes safely without being struck by lightning. I don't know when I managed to get that 'eldest child usually gets struck by lighting' idea out of my head, but then I don't think I will ever forget that particular day. It's not like I have a good memory (my friends can tell you how bad I am at remembering stuff), but somehow, this incident got stuck in my brain.

In case you were wondering - no, it didn't rain in Ipoh today.

2 comments:

miss critical said...

ahahaha... well it rained this morning in Moscow ... ^_^

Anonymous said...

Hahahaha..dei u din tell me ponn...hahahahaha