My Neighborhood and an Earthquake

Growing up in Southern California, earthquakes were fairly common and I grew used to them. But the first one I remember experiencing was distinct. It was 1987, and I was lying on my bed next to my older brother reading a Batman comic book. About a quarter to eight, the room started to move.

I'm not sure if I had ever experienced an earthquake while awake before that, but I know that this was a foreign feeling for me. My parents had trained me to go to the long hallway in the house and get in a doorway, the most stable place in our home. That hallway was right outside my bedroom, so my brother, being the quick thinker that he is, picked me up and tossed me towards the hallway.

I guess he was looking out for me, but it only made me more panicked. 

Once it was over, we checked the news and saw that it was a 5.9 shaker, no small deal, even to an area where earthquakes happen regularly.

After some debate, my mom decided that we were all going to school anyway so my brother headed off to middle school while my mom walked my sister and me the few blocks to our elementary school. When we got there, it was a vague sort of controlled chaos. The majority of kids had still shown up, most of them with their parents instead of the standard solo walkers and bikers. 

My mom was allowed to sign out several other kids, and since they decided to cancel school once everyone had checked in, we ended up taking home four or five families worth of kids to our house. I grew up in a neighborhood with lots of families the same age, and we all served as the emergency contact for each other. 

There were about 20 of us crammed into our family room, watching TV all day. It was a funny feeling, being both on edge for aftershocks (which came throughout the day) and excited to be missing school and hanging out with all our friends. We even made a game out of waiting for the aftershocks. There used to be a vase full of fake flowers on top of our TV, and every time they moved even a little, we would all yell and grab cushions and put them over our head. My brother would even put on an old hard hat. Most of the time, the flowers shook because our dog was scratching behind his ear.

I think the strongest memory of that day was how much fun it was, even though it was a scary experience and I was on edge a bit the rest of the day. When I look back, I'm kind of amazed at how well we all knew each other; my mom signed out almost two dozen neighborhood kids, and those parents trusted her to look after them on a day where everyone was a little nervous that "The Big One" would be on its way. I think that says something about my mom and it says something about the kind of neighborhood we had. The only way to get the kind of reputation she had and the kind of neighborhood we had is through time and consistency. Being dependable time after time, they trusted her, and we had all been together long enough that our neighborhood felt like we were all in it together. 

What a place to grow up.