I Feel The Earth Move...

On Tuesday, just before noon, I experienced something that I had been wanting to experience since I first set foot in southern California. Not a celebrity encounter, not face lift.

I experienced an earthquake. My very first one. Either that or I fell madly in love. But I'm pretty sure it was an earthquake.

I seriously used to wonder if it would ever happen, if perhaps the last one had happened without me and now the ground beneath Los Angeles would be forever motionless. People would sit next to me on benches and I'd think "Earthquake!" only to be disappointed. But then it happened. A 5.4.

To be sure, the name says it all. The earth quakes. It's really nothing more than that. But it is a completely eerie feeling to have the terra firma become terra squishy on its own.

I'm proud to say I did not freak out. I merely looked around, confused, wondering how all 50 of the people I was around were going to fit under the 7 or so door frames. No one else seemed to move. I always thought southern californians prepared for these things, the way I used to have tornado drills in grade school. I was at the piano at the time, and I thought for a brief instance I might crawl under there. It seemed safe enough. After about 6 or 7 seconds the earthquake stopped and we all moved outside, so I didn't have time to find out.

The thing that freaked me out the most, was that, when I got outside, I tried to text my loved ones to let them know I was okay - and to check on them. Of course, so was everyone within a 70 mile radius. And I suddenly remembered "Live Free or Die Hard" - anyone see that? - I felt like we were warned that this would happen - the minute we actually needed our technology in a life or death situation was the one minute it would fail us completely. I couldn't make a call or text anyone for about an hour or so after the quake.

And that's when I started to freak. What if it had been serious? What if I was indeed stuck beneath my piano? What if, after being trapped under the piano for over an hour before I could reach somebody, I developed a severe phobia of pianos and suddenly brought to an end my very livlihood!?

It's moments like these I fear my life doesn't really exist. It exsists only in microwaves or in a virtual world - like this blog for example - and when that crashes (and it will) I will remain a mere shadow of a person. And where will Bruce Willis be to save me? Yippie-kay-ay.