Well I have to hand it to Californians, they don’t let a little thing like an earthquake interrupt their day. I’m a fairly recent transplant to the West Coast so this was my first quake experience. I thought I had handled it fairly well, my lightning fast, cat-like reflexes allowed me to jump off of the couch and run through my house and out the door in record time. What surprised me when I got out there was the lack of other people. Luckily I had managed to throw some pants on as I sprinted past my room, so later when the neighbors came by to let me know how scared I looked standing out on the street alone, at least they couldn’t throw in, “And you looked pretty cold too.”

That being said, watching the news reporting on the aftermath I was rather disappointed. I expected more….I guess aftermath. Where were the towering infernos, the masses of displaced people wandering the streets, where was the body count? Don’t get me wrong Oprah/Tom Cruise/God forbid anyone should have been hurt in this thing, but when I thought earthquake, I always had a picture in my head of something a little more old testament. As the day went on and the quake kept being downgraded from 6 to 5.8, 5.6, 5.4, and finally a puny 5.2, and I kept seeing the same two clips of an alley where bricks fell off a building and an ice rink with a busted sprinkler system I started losing the faith. This is an act of God? Almost enough to make me switch from agnostic to atheist. That’s when I realized that most of my friends live in other parts of the country! I rushed to the phone and went all the way through my contact list telling those near and dear to me about my brush with mortality. After accepting their awed relief at my escape I felt much better.

An earthquake. Not what I had imagined, but it is one more experience for the books. Plus I always say, life is not just about the highs and lows we all must go through. It’s about how terrifying, sublime, or uplifting you can make them sound later.