Moments earlier, I was driving in the eye of the storm (literally). Huge booms followed each flash of lightning.
We can tell how far a storm is from us, by timing the interval between seeing the flash and the hearing thunder. Given the 1 second interval, I was practically in a storm.
I actually thought that I have heard more monstrous sounds of thunder when I was still small. Thunder and lightning comes along with the rain, without fail. The sound created resembles earsplitting explosions. I remembered staying up all night because I simply can't sleep with loud bangs threatening to shatter my windowpanes.
I was small kid then, with equally small eardrums, but I've always had ears that sticks out. That means I catch more sound waves that others with a normal set of ears. The crashes and booms were so overwhelming, I'd spend time under my blanket until its over. I recalled that my cousins did the same thing too. When we hear the first loud boom, we'd look at each other, eyes wide, cringed and then run cover. Cover as in under the blankets. And of course, occupy the most strategic and "safest" of all locations - the L shaped sofa, away from windows. It felt safe somehow.
But as kids, I think we were pretty creative. Very much different from what kids do today. I have my Power Rangers/BajaHitam/Flashman/Captain Planet and much more - experience. Mountain climbing. We even have safety harnesses, no kidding. We had our Stone Age experience where we lived in an imaginary cave. The Paleolithic period. (perhaps we watched too much Flintstones, but even the Flintstones were far more advanced than we were)
Teacher-student, Doctor-Patient (no touchy feely, we use doctor's kit), Eatery that served flowers and leaves, and my favourite was camping out under the shades of the leafy mango tree on a bright sunny day.
Then of course came other things. 5 against 5 open air badminton. There were so many of us, including neighbours. Grandma lined her flower pots in a straight line, dividing the grass and the cemented front porch. Guess what, that's our "net". And well, being child "pros", the 2 foot tall plants were getting the real beating, not the rackets. Not really "over the net", we actually did "through the net". Got countless of scolding for that, so we tried something else. I noticed that our neighbour is always NOT around. No cars and nobody at home. That's when we came up with the mother of all plans, use the wall (around 5 feet tall) as our "net". Hey this is far more realistic a net than the 2 feet tall PLANT. Of course, to start playing, we need someone to be at the other side of the net. My running jump with a little kick off the wall got me up and over. Every now and we have stray shuttlecocks up on the neighbour's roof and balcony. Whoops. We'd continue with a new one.
Of course we took turns to climb over the wall. Some just did it for kicks. And practiced wall climbing. Little did we realised that all those innocent "practices" left little foot marks on the white wall. Uh-oh. All of us got a good scolding. I think it was just as bad at our neighbour's side of the wall. Whoops.
No more badminton since. We were sent to a REAL hall to play. Better.
Oh, back to games we play. We had our version of paint-ball. No paint or balls in our case, we use water-guns. One of my cousin even had the GhostBuster water gun. Packs a whole lot of water! Cut the story short, we all ended up dirty and wet. It gets crazier when you put 8 kids to wash a car. Kids got washed instead. That entitled us another scolding. Haha.
We can tell how far a storm is from us, by timing the interval between seeing the flash and the hearing thunder. Given the 1 second interval, I was practically in a storm.
I actually thought that I have heard more monstrous sounds of thunder when I was still small. Thunder and lightning comes along with the rain, without fail. The sound created resembles earsplitting explosions. I remembered staying up all night because I simply can't sleep with loud bangs threatening to shatter my windowpanes.
I was small kid then, with equally small eardrums, but I've always had ears that sticks out. That means I catch more sound waves that others with a normal set of ears. The crashes and booms were so overwhelming, I'd spend time under my blanket until its over. I recalled that my cousins did the same thing too. When we hear the first loud boom, we'd look at each other, eyes wide, cringed and then run cover. Cover as in under the blankets. And of course, occupy the most strategic and "safest" of all locations - the L shaped sofa, away from windows. It felt safe somehow.
But as kids, I think we were pretty creative. Very much different from what kids do today. I have my Power Rangers/BajaHitam/Flashman/Captain Planet and much more - experience. Mountain climbing. We even have safety harnesses, no kidding. We had our Stone Age experience where we lived in an imaginary cave. The Paleolithic period. (perhaps we watched too much Flintstones, but even the Flintstones were far more advanced than we were)
Teacher-student, Doctor-Patient (no touchy feely, we use doctor's kit), Eatery that served flowers and leaves, and my favourite was camping out under the shades of the leafy mango tree on a bright sunny day.
Then of course came other things. 5 against 5 open air badminton. There were so many of us, including neighbours. Grandma lined her flower pots in a straight line, dividing the grass and the cemented front porch. Guess what, that's our "net". And well, being child "pros", the 2 foot tall plants were getting the real beating, not the rackets. Not really "over the net", we actually did "through the net". Got countless of scolding for that, so we tried something else. I noticed that our neighbour is always NOT around. No cars and nobody at home. That's when we came up with the mother of all plans, use the wall (around 5 feet tall) as our "net". Hey this is far more realistic a net than the 2 feet tall PLANT. Of course, to start playing, we need someone to be at the other side of the net. My running jump with a little kick off the wall got me up and over. Every now and we have stray shuttlecocks up on the neighbour's roof and balcony. Whoops. We'd continue with a new one.
Of course we took turns to climb over the wall. Some just did it for kicks. And practiced wall climbing. Little did we realised that all those innocent "practices" left little foot marks on the white wall. Uh-oh. All of us got a good scolding. I think it was just as bad at our neighbour's side of the wall. Whoops.
No more badminton since. We were sent to a REAL hall to play. Better.
Oh, back to games we play. We had our version of paint-ball. No paint or balls in our case, we use water-guns. One of my cousin even had the GhostBuster water gun. Packs a whole lot of water! Cut the story short, we all ended up dirty and wet. It gets crazier when you put 8 kids to wash a car. Kids got washed instead. That entitled us another scolding. Haha.
My small ass gunsThis is what he used:
What the heck!I want to relive that part of my childhood, if not all.
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