Arianna Georgi

 In case you don’t pay attention to these things (or check cnn.com compulsively like some people I know), we had an earthquake here in Southern California on Tuesday.  For some reason, I seem to have been the only person in my entire building (and probably the Southern California area) that didn’t notice either because I was standing up rummaging through the refrigerator for my lunch, or because I frequently drink a little too much wine at night and stumble around my house so the shaking world didn’t really seem that out of place. 

Either way, it occurred to me afterwards that there is a very specific way people react when there has been a minor earthquake (aka an earthquake just big enough to shake them around, but not bad enough to actually scare anyone).  I’m not talking about “Earthquake Preparedness” like the videos you sometimes have to watch in grade school, but rather the way in which everyone in my entire building and who I saw for the rest of the day seemed to react.  If you are a robot pretending to be a human living among us, or someone like me that had no reaction whatsoever, this guide is for you:

1. Run out of your office and say something about the earthquake. “Whoa, was that an earthquake?” will do, but you could also use “wow, did anyone else feel that?” or “that was crazy!”

2. Wait in the hall for other people to also run out of their offices so that you can compare notes with them on the exact moment you first heard the earthquake and what exactly you thought it was.

“Well, I was sitting at my desk working on these TCP reports and I was thinking about lunch and then I thought someone had slammed the door, but it was the earthquake!” 

“Really?  I was sitting at my desk, talking to a customer and then I thought that someone was rolling something heavy down the hall, but it turned out to be the earthquake.”

3. Relate any past story you have that is even vaguely related to an earthquake in excruciating detail. For instance if you once had a cousin that heard about a friend that was involved in a major earthquake, this is the time to tell everyone.

4. Go back to your desk and call/email a few people you know to confirm that they too experienced the earthquake. Make sure to let them know exactly what you were doing when you felt it and what you thought it was. Also, relate any past earthquake related stories.

5. Get online to read the news and confirm that yes, indeed, it was an earthquake and not just a mass hallucination.

6. For the rest of the day when anyone new stops by, returns to the office, or generally just comes within 50 feet of you ask them about their earthquake experience. Relate your own.

Now, I have to admit, half the reason for this post is jealousy.  This earthquake is one of the more exciting things that has happened thus far at my work and there was a sort of snow day kind of feeling around the office while everyone gathered to review notes that I was completely left out of.  I tried to chime in (step 3) with my own pathetic story of how there was an earthquake when I lived in Maryland and was still a baby but compared to everyone else’s awesome earthquake experiences it was pretty lame.  I can’t help feeling like I missed out on something, some sort of shared bonding experience with everyone else.  I will forever be known as the girl that “didn’t feel the earthquake” and when we all have work functions and discuss that time we had an earthquake I will be painfully excluded.  My only hope is for another, even more interesting earthquake to occur.  When it does, hopefully I will notice it happening but even if I don’t I plan to fake it.

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