The Worst Way To Experience An Earthquake

I always heard that Japan's earthquakes could scare the crap out of you, but not like this.

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On Wednesday evening at 11:36pm Tokyo time, the Fukushima Prefecture felt some of the biggest tremors it had experienced in over a year. The magnitude 7.4 earthquake caused property damage, derailed a train and knocked many people off their feet. 160 people were injured and two people died, according to the BBC.

Its magnitude lessened only a little as it somersaulted up the country, crash-landing in the Aomori Prefecture at a magnitude somewhere between 5.5 and 6. It burst into Misawa with a vengeance, leaving a mess that every person on base felt.

And that's where it finally found me. While I was on the toilet.

After a long home-alone day of minding my business and accomplishing my business, I found myself in the commode doing my business. I had just gotten done with a load of dishes and I left a few bowls to soak, so my phone was still sitting next to the Bluetooth speaker by the kitchen sink. So I found myself doing that thing we all do on the loo when our phones are far away: twiddling my toes, sniffing nearby candles, reading the labels of whatever product bottles are within arm's reach, and reveling in my personal party of one. Tonight's entertainment? Our finest bottle of Out Of Africa Shea Butter Body Lotion, cabinet-aged to near-novel perfection.

I squinted at the tiny alien language on the back sticker, confident in my ample knowledge of the verbal nuances of science.

"Butyrospermum parkii," I said out loud, offensively incorrectly.

I held a Vanilla Cupcake candle in my other hand like a glass of pinot, sniffing the smells and detecting notes I hadn't discerned before, like... was that un petit gâteau?

*sniffff*

Perhaps a note of... la vanille?

*SNRRRK*

I parked my nose on the rim of the candle for a second. Maybe hyperventilating paraffin wax wasn't such a fabulous idea - I was getting a little disoriented.

Wait, scratch that... I was REALLY disoriented.

I turned the candle around and over, looking for another ingredients list to ogle. What kind of chemicals could possibly be in this candle that would make me feel this dizzy?

And then the rattling arrived.

It's been many years since my last geology class in community college, but the demonstrations about seismic activity will always stick with me. From what I understand, the movements can be categorized into P waves (primary) and S waves (secondary). The P waves come first, with the kind of back-and-forth movements that rattle your furniture around. Then come the S waves, which are more of an up and down, vertically-waving-a-rope sort of movement.

That would explain why all of a sudden the toilet was trying to buck me off. The shower curtain warped back and forth disconcertingly, everything on the counter was shuffling around and falling over, and I struggled for anything stable to hold onto. I ended up with one hand on the floor, one hand on the countertop, and both cheeks in the air exposed to whatever havoc this earthquake could bring.

In that moment, every Life Alert commercial I had ever laughed at in my life came back to haunt me at the same time.

All I heard was CHUFfaCHUFfaCHUFfaCHUFfaCHUFfa cut through with Japan's IOS earthquake alert system, which was still hooked up to the Bluetooth speaker. The sound of British Siri yelling "VWOOP VWOOP VWOOP. EARTHQUAKE. VWOOP VWOOP VWOOP. EARTHQUAKE," was so loud it felt like it was blaring from my own head.

Through the sheer force of adrenaline alone I managed to fling myself towards the light, my leggings drooped around my ankles. Every single tidbit of earthquake safety shot out of my brain like a party cannon as I tugged my dignity back on and scampered in panic.

okay alright um um uh CLOSE LAPTOP okay THE TV okay it's stable DISHES no they're fine okay okay shot shoot SHOOT

*CHUFfaCHUFfaCHUFfaCHUFfachuffachunKCHUNKCLUNKCLUNK*

okay um uh TABLE table table...table? no bad idea table no help me

"VWOOP VWOOP VWOOP. EARTHQUAKE."

UMMmm ahhh hmm *ding* ARCHWAY. ENTRYWAY. DOORWAY. THAT WAY.

My hand found itself in a death grip on the front doorknob as I tried listening through the auditory anarchy for signs that I should abandon ship or rescue anything expensive. I was surprised I hadn't crushed it by the time the shaking had died down and I convinced my hand to let go. I shook my legs free of their fear-cement and started tiptoeing around to check for damage - luckily nothing had broken or fallen from nails in the wall, but enough objects were scattered to give clues of what just happened. The shaking was so intense that it sloshed all the water out of the bowls I was soaking in the sink.

This wasn't my first earthquake and it won't be my last, and I know Japan has experienced earthquakes that have been much worse. But if you're ever in a 9-story apartment building when an earthquake hits, I hope you never find yourself where I was: intoxicated on hyperventilation and hubris, two cheeks to the wind.

Never again, dude. Never again.

P.S. I posted this to a popular Facebook page on base a few seconds after the shaking calmed down. Today I learned I'm surrounded by 328 maniacal sadists who laughed at my hardships and trials. Wow.

doot doot doot doot