Friday, July 27, 2007

Shame On Me

You know what pisses me off? Last night, my brother and I got into a discussion over dinner about Thunder and it's origins. Without hesitation, I began discussing how the clouds crash together in the air because of something to do with the high and low pressure and then they...I stopped as I saw my brother staring me straight in the face trying desperately not to laugh.

"What"?

"Do you REALLY still believe that?"

"Isn't that what happens? I learned that in like third grade. I've known it for years. In fact, I can still remember the tiny exercise that my teacher had us...."

"No Christi"

He proceeded to explain to me what really happens when we hear thunder and I wanted to curl in a corner and die at how embarrassed I was. ALL THESE YEARS believing a LIE!

Bound and determined not to let it happen again, I went on an hour long Internet search of Thunder, Lighting, and all things associated with said storms and I came to the conclusion that my brother was in fact right...and I was sadly mistaken.

But it makes me so incredibly mad! As a young child, your educational needs are put into the hands of your teacher in front of you and you're trusting that the information they are providing you is accurate and true. I realize that as an adult we are taught to never take information at face value and to discover the truth on our own, but at the age of 10 how much questioning do you really know how to do? I sure as hell didn't and therefore I took in what I was taught, studied the information I needed to know, and regurgitated it in test format for my teacher to grade and give me that big ol' pretty sticker with a "good job" marked in red ink beside it. And that was it, I never thought of it again. I went on with life, carrying with me the "A" answer I gave on the test, never thinking about it again..until last night.

I consider myself an educated individual which is why it embarrasses me immensely to know that I took another aspect of my education for granted. I trusted a single source as fact.

Stupid Christi.

And stupid third grade teacher for misleading me =)

3 comments:

Farrah said...

Christi, your teacher didn't lie to you, she just explained it in terms a third grader could understand :o) However, your post highly confused me because I always thought thunder meant God was bowling (Ha!)

Congrats on posting five days in a row!

Krista said...

OK, wait. So what does happen?

You're totally not alone on this one.

Christi said...

Krista, apparently thunder is not separate from lightning per se. Thunder, is actually the delayed sound of lightning hitting the ground. Which is why once you see lightning, you count until you hear the thunder which will tell you how far away the storm is.