Shake, Rattle and Laugh
I don’t particularly have a “bucket list.” I have a few things in life I still want to experience, but don’t really keep them written down.
If I did have a list like that, I don’t know whether I would have ever thought to add “experience a hurricane earthquake on the fifth floor of a building” before the fact.
Like a lot of other people, I really didn’t know what to make of last week’s tremor. I had my headphones on as I plowed through work at my desk in Baltimore. After someone closed a drawer a few desks away, I noticed the empty Snapple bottle on my desk moving.
“Why did she slam that drawer?” I thought. “It didn’t seem that forceful.”
Then I noticed the bottle still trembling a few seconds later. Then I thought I saw something else moving. Then I wondered if something was wrong with me.
A lot of people I have talked to had that same thought pattern. In the back of my head, I was thinking earthquake, but the front was telling me those sort of things don’t happen around here. I sat still briefly to make sure I wasn’t having some sort of episode then went to make sure I wasn’t going crazy.