Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Surprise

And now for a story.

Early August, Phil and I were at our apartment watching TV, and while the episode was in the middle of a high-speed car race, our apartment building starts to shake. Back and forth pretty quickly, like fast heavy right-to-left vibrations. Then, after a second of that while Phil and I look at each other, (me thinking somehow this could have something to do with the race on the tv?,) the building starts to move back and forth, up and down pretty heavily. My thought is that some huge truck has just crashed into the apartment below us. We glance towards outside, hearing people talking; we stand up as the building keeps moving, and I follow Phil, who's started to move toward the door. He starts to run, so do I, and he says, "Hurry, get outside, it's an earthquake." We barefoot down the cement steps to the ground, where other tenants are coming outside. By now the earthquake's over. We watch people across the complex start talking to other neighbors they don't know about what just happened. Phil says we should stay outside just in case there's more. After about a minute of no moving, we go back inside. It was really strange; it was exciting in the way that huge thunderstorms are exciting when nobody gets hurt. In fact, it was like thunder on the ground, if you can imagine that. You know how you it starts out somewhat quiet, then is suddenly loud, and you can feel it the whole time? It was more feeling than sound, though. Now that I think about it, I guess there was a sound that accompanied the moving. That must have added to my dumptruck-in-the-building theory.