how disappointing

Just two deaths? No destruction? No mayhem?

Pshaw. What a sissy earthquake. No wonder New York's Easter night wilding made bigger headlines.

So we were just going over the local news, eagerly scanning for an update on yesterday's earthquake, only to find....pretty much nothing. That was yesterday, after all. What does that say for human nature?!! A 7.2 quake is a pretty sizable quake, but it appears that a quake's worth is measured not so much in its size as in the amount of mayhem it causes. Without distress and destruction, there's just not much to say, I guess.

Although it's also very disappointing when there's a lot of damage from an earthquake that turns out to register only, say, a 3.3 on the Richter Scale. That's like getting a B+ after all, when you thought your project was so good. We feel gypped. Cheated. Not to mention rather alarmed. Especially if we got all excited when it originally hit, enthusiastically sympathizing with whoever it was in the imaginary epicenter and anticipating the headlines. Geezums, we're thinking. If that was a 3.3, what does it take to get a 7.5?

In fact, the first thing we did yesterday when the quake hit was to run inside (yes, inside) to check out the news. Was it a big one? How big? Where was it centered--here, in San Diego, or was it a monster in San Francisco we could feel even hundreds of miles away?

Those first few moments of anticipation are always so thrilling. Why is that? We know even through our excitement that it would be hideously inconvenient to have our downtown collapse into rubble and that it would be terrible if people were killed. But still, there we are, feeling a bit gypped when the "what if" turns out to be not much of anything. Only two deaths? Pshaw. We get more deaths than that from driving accidents every day here in So. Cal. The event itself isn't the important thing: it's always about the stories we can tell afterward. If I can't create the story, I'll forget it in days.

I have short-term memory issues, you know.