Tag Archives: thunder storm

Thunder Explained to a Child

Text:

“The angels are bowling”

Context:

“The angels are bowling,” my mom use to tell me when I was a child. I was so afraid of thunderstorms, so my mom told me that thunder was just the angels in Heaven bowling. I stopped being afraid of thunder then and would just complain that the angels always had to go bowling when I was trying to fall asleep.

Analysis:

In order to help me overcome my fear of thunderstorms, my mother constructed a legend – a story set in the real world and told as if it was true. Now, I asked her if she came up with the legend on her own, and she tells me she’s not sure. She may have heard it from somewhere else or come up with it on the spot. My family and I are Christians, so my mother used emic, or insider’s, language when discussing that thunderstorms are just angels bowling to esoterically communicate to me that I had nothing to fear.

“Bowling in Heaven” (memorate)

by Grace Robinson

“When I was little, I was really scared of thunder storms and [my] Grandma would always tell me that the sound of the thunder was actually the sound of people bowling in heaven, -and after she told me that story enough I wasn’t scared of them anymore.”

My informant spoke with great passion about this short narrative that was replayed to her many times as a child. She told me her grandmother was very Christian, so she thought that claiming that the loud thunder was actually the result of heaven-dwellers indulging in a carefree recreation, would ease by fear. Her grandmother was ultimately right, as the reminder soothed her anxieties over thunder storms, having grown up in such a religious household, the familiarity to religion from the group she was raised with aided her, even though she doesn’t claim to be especially religious herself.

I also find it interesting that while I would still classify this short narrative as a memorate, since it pertains to a personal experience, it also shares many traits with that of ‘myths’. It is essentially a kind of creation story for a universal truth, seeing as folk everywhere hear thunder. It’s a sacred narrative about how something came to be (the thunder deriving from something holy), and it doesn’t take place in the real world (i.e. Heaven). So while I wouldn’t quite classify this piece as a myth, due to what I believe to be a small reach, it definitely seems to share its qualities.

Lightning Is the Devil Getting Whipped

Nationality: Sudanese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/16/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic

Informant Bio: Informant is a friend and fellow business major.  He is a junior at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.  His family is from Sudan and they are Muslim.  Both he and his twin brother were educated in international schools.  He speaks Arabic and English.

 

Context: I was talking with the informant about traditions and rituals his family has.

 

Item: “Any time there is thunder during a lightning storm, every time you see a lightning crack it is the Devil getting whipped.  I don’t know why that is or where it came from, it’s more a, ‘don’t get scared by lightning, it’s just the Devil getting whipped’ kind of thing’.  My mother is the one who always says it”.

 

Analysis: This is an instance of people assigning meaning to a physical phenomena that they cannot explain.  It makes sense that an older figure (the mother) is the one who says this, as it is meant to comfort the children by using familiar (and acceptable) imagery.  It also allows people to feel a sense of connection and intimacy with God, as, lightning is a common and natural phenomena and for God to appear that many times implies he is watching over everyone.