OMG you guys did you feel it? There was a 5.8 earthquake in Virginia, which we felt as an earth-shaking 2.2 here in New York. WHERE WERE YOU? I was walking to the copy machine, it was pretty crazy. Apparently all of DC is evacuating their office buildings. Folks in my office have been told not to leave the building in case of aftershocks (which I imagine could be as high as 1.5). Shit is getting REAL.
East Coast you are so cute.
So I grew up in Seattle, which isn’t the most earthquake-prone zone in the world, but gets quakes every few years (usually pretty small ones). But Seattle is on a fault line, and there’s a city-wide understanding that some day, probably soon, we are all going to be obliterated by The Big One. We learn about it (and are duly terrified about it) in school. We have “earthquake drills” the same way that Americans used to have atomic bomb drills — get under your desk, hang onto the leg with one hand, protect your head with the other (alternate earthquake life-saving advice: Stand in a doorway). At the beginning of the year, we would all have to assemble “emergency kits” in case of a big quake — granola bars, a blanket, a flashlight, etc etc. My mom would also include pictures of our family and a hand-written letter in which she told me how much she loved me, and that she would probably be stuck at the hospital (she was a nurse) but that she or my dad were on their way, and that I should listen to my teachers and stay safe and try to find my sister and that everything was going to be ok and that she loved us very much.
She would cry at the kitchen table writing that letter anew every year, and would cry again when school let out and she had to re-read it while we ate the emergency-kit granola bars.
If there’s ever a real earthquake in New York, at least we know Twitter will be on it, since #earthquake is the #1 trending topic right now and everyone is sharing their stories of survival against all odds. And I’m sure that various fundamentalist groups will come out any minute to blame this quake on the abortionists, the lesbians and the feminists, so I apologize on behalf of all of us for interrupting your day with a slight tremor. I know, we really had it coming. I suspect this is actually God’s response to the tragic news that Will and Jada are getting divorced — the timing is just a little too close to be a coincidence, you know? — but what do I know, God works in mysterious ways. (Although to be real for a second, if a big earthquake actually does hit? We’re all going to die.)
But guys, let’s not make this about ourselves. A 2.2 quake is EXTREMELY SERIOUS, and I hear your bed even shook a little bit? But really, it’s Virginia that has it the worst. They actually felt the ground shake for, like, ten seconds. Which is basically like being in Japan for the tsunami. VIRGINIA I HOPE YOU ARE ALL OK AND SURVIVING AN EVENT IN WHICH NOTHING WAS DAMAGED AND NO ONE WAS INJURED. OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU DURING THIS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TIME.
Today, we are all Virginians.