[Tornadoes and Blinkers]

As I not-so-studiously prepare for an upcoming science test, bullets of water suddenly begin to torpedo at my window. I instinctively look to the pane of glass. Within a few seconds, my eyes are assaulted by a blinding flash of lightning, then my ears by a thunderous boom. In my mind, I'm thinking, "Aw, yeah, baby. STORM TIME!" That is, until I realized what could come.

Monday night at 8:10pm, an EF-1 tornado touched down in Moorefield Township, near Springfield, Ohio in Clark County. This tornado was reported to pack up to 90 mph winds. No injuries were reported, the NWS said. However, concrete blocks were lifted onto a roof, power lines were downed and at least one home was damaged. This was not a huge tornado, but it reminded me of what could have happened.

On Sunday, May 21st, the single deadliest tornado on record ripped through Joplin, Missouri. National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes said the tornado in Joplin was given a preliminary label as an EF4. This storm had winds of 190 to 198 mph. At times, it was three-quarters of a mile wide.

Sunday's killer tornado ripped through the heart of Joplin, a blue-collar southwest Missouri city of 50,000 people, slamming straight into St. John's Regional Medical Center. It destroyed possibly thousands of homes, and leveled hundreds of businessed, even massive ones like Home Depot or Walmart.

All of these tornadoes twisting up and down Tornado Alley had me thinking about when I was younger. I had not yet lived in Ohio yet, I was at the ripe, old age of about four and I had lived in the New Jersey/Philadelphia area. At this age, I had not yet learned much English.

Tornado sirens were going off, Mom and Dad had the news on to watch what was happening, and I was just a curious kid looking out the window at the medium drizzle. A news anchor reports the possibility of a tornado touching down. I look to my parents, "What's 'tomato?' " I ask. They only chuckle and say, "TORNADO?" Later that night, they explained to me of these rapidly whirling, funnel-shaped clouds of doom. As I was tucked into bed, I could help but try to figure out the difference between "tomatoes" and "tornadoes." Oh, god. I was a cute kid.

Have you ever mistaken some words for others, or had your kids mistake words for others? Like, water and quarter. Or maybe, as a kid, when you didn't understand something, you just made up something that made sense in your mind just so you had some kind of explanation.

I remember doing that around the age of five or six. Always sitting in the back seat ( Sorry, Rebecca, you can take the front. I ain't drivin' at five. ), I was always very confused whenever the ticking of the blinker went on. It always happened right before or as the car turned left or right, so, it must have something to do with that. I thought for a very long time that the ticking was the sound of the car keys hitting the interior of the car as we turned. Huh, and to think that at age five, I was thinking about Newton's first Law of Motion!

Have you ever made up explanations for things you didn't understand as a kid?