My Earthquake Story

I got to work again today (at the continuation high school as the traditional high schools don't start up until September). English class.

They were reading Tuesdays with Morrie. Yesterday they left off just a couple chapters before the end, so we easily finished the book. Then we started watching the movie. My instructions were to end the movie at the same place for both groups (a standard instruction). Easy enough.

Well, not so much as it turned out.

The second group was watching the movie. We were about 15 minutes from where I stopped the movie for the first group when the shaking started...

"Oh, shi... Uh, shoot!"

I caught myself in time (barely). And then I was focused on other things, for the ground really started to shake. The floor shook back and forth, and it was shaking hard enough that my adrenaline started to pump. I was a little nervous. My eyes darted everywhere, looking for danger. I told the class that getting under the desks was probably a good idea. Only a couple of them did.

This was not my first earthquake. This was not even my first earthquake in class. So, I knew that we were going to have to evacuate.

We weren't outside for that long, really. It was near the end of the day for the "morning" students, so mostly they were concerned that they wouldn't get dismissed on time (they were). The boys all talked about how the earthquake wasn't a big deal, was fun, and didn't make them nervous at all.

Most of them had their cell phones out. None of the adults tried to stop them. As it turned out it didn't matter, because none of them could make a call.

We were allowed back into the classrooms about three minutes before the end of the period. Three students returned to class. Well, it wasn't like we were going to finish the movie anyway.