Home June 9, 1996
Earthquakes in the Midwest
Earthquakes are very rare where I grew up. I never thought I would experience
one while living in the Midwest,
I was a lifeguard in my university days. One day my boss called and asked me if I had noticed the water level change. He explained that he had seen the water in his aquarium moving from side to side. Since there seemed to be no other reason for it, he guessed that an earthquake had occurred. I agreed it was possible, but I highly doubted his theory.
Sure enough, that night the media reported that there had in fact been an imperceptible earthquake. Since it was so unusual to have any kind of earthquake, it was the main story of the day. Can you imagine an earthquake that could not be felt being the lead news story in Japan?
I was in Japan when I experienced my first real earthquake. It happened after a Japanese language class. All of a sudden everything started shaking! Though it was a mild quake, it was very frightening to me; my legs shook for a long time afterwards. Almost as bad as the earthquake was that the teacher had much fun at my expense by telling everyone how scared I looked.
My classmates had no sympathy. They were Californians and had experienced so many earthquakes they couldn't remember their first one.