Years ago, when my sons (now in their forties) were small, we lived in Lynn. I had always been petrified of thunderstorms and didn’t want to hand the fear on to the boys. But they still remember being herded into the dining room – where we crouched under the table whenever an electrical storm began.

This routine started in earnest after lightning actually struck our little rental house. It traveled in a straight line from a kitchen outlet, down the hall, and out the front door, which, mercifully, was open. It traveled in a sudden flash of light, which sped in a narrow strip along the floor. Here and there along the pathway of the strike, there were spikes – it looked like a lie-detector printout.

From then on, each time there was an electrical storm, we opened the front door and went to our haven. Then it happened again. This time the kitchen outlet was scorched. We decided not to repair it this time and never were struck again.

I recently asked my eldest son, Kenneth, his impressions of those events. He replied, “I vaguely remember hiding out under the dining room table, and seeing the thin blue streaks as they jumped between electrical sockets. I also wondered what all the fuss was about; as long as you didn’t get in the way, it was fun to watch – to think about the power that comes right out of the air.”

Later, when we lived in New Hampshire, we had a print shop in the barn out back. A sudden storm arrived while I was reading Time magazine in the bathtub; I heard the crack and suddenly found myself and my magazine clear across the room. I surely traveled there under my own hysterical power, but who knows? The strike took out a print camera and a television set in the barn.

I also checked in with Michael, two years younger than Ken. “As far as I can figure, there have been no lasting traumatic results from the near electrocutions dealt to me by Mother Nature,” he e-mailed me. “I still am intrigued by thunderstorms and love to listen as they rumble down from the heavens. I always count out in seconds how far away the storms are, from the lightning strikes to the sound of the thunder. I appreciate the storms’ awesome power and never fear them.”

I guess I did my duty as a parent to avoid handing my trepidations on to the sons. It seems that they are not targets though – only I am. The curse has followed me to the Vineyard, where lightning strikes are supposedly rare. So far, my little ranch house has been struck three times, possibly because the radio station is up the street, with its nice, tall tower, thoroughly grounded. Apparently, lightning travels down the path of least resistance, to the next tallest target. And my house, though low-slung, sits on high ground.

The first big storm, back in 1998, knocked out my telephone line and most of my iMac. With the help of Island techies, the computer was restored to reasonable health, and I installed a huge backup battery to deal with frequent losses of power and provide surge protection. The next strike took out the phone line part of the surge protector but left the rest of the battery intact. After that, I resorted to makeshift protection and added a separate phone protector to the mass of machinery under the desk.

Last summer, after years of mild and relatively distant electrical storms, I grew complacent. But at 2:30 a.m. one night, our entire neighborhood was struck. Hard. The light and the crash were simultaneous; so was our reaction. The world was thrown into darkness. The resident greyhounds, which had never displayed anxiety during thunderstorms, panicked. The strike was widespread and vicious. In the early morning, when power was finally restored, neighbors called to discuss our damage. We lost microwave ovens, plasma televisions, freezers, and computers.

My TV was destroyed again. The modern computer downstairs was wiped out. But the iMac – veteran of the three strikes, and now run by a gerbil on a wheel – was just fine. I assessed the damage, wondering again what makes me so attractive to lightning.

After I got a new TV, I carefully read the use and care book, only to discover that the advice, in case of an electrical storm, is to disconnect the plug and the cable. If I had been trying to disconnect them while the storm was going on, I probably would have been electrocuted. Meanwhile, the gerbil continues his travels on the wheel, but his hair is all on end.