40 - Quake

One of my co-workers stopped by my cubicle to make a little small talk before going back to her desk. We had only conversed for a few minutes when suddenly another of my other co-workers asked/announced rather loudly, "Did anyone just feel that?"

Some people were on the same page as her. "Oh my god! You felt it too?" Meanwhile, there were those like me who were a little confused as to what she was talking about. "Feel what?"

"It was the weirdest thing," she said. "It was like somebody came up behind and shook the back of my chair. Then I saw that my printer was shaking."

Another person chimed in: "I was looking at the cubicle and it was wobbling."

Yet another person piped up: "My coffee had ripples running through it!"

Finally, someone said the words that had been floating through all of their minds. "That was an earthquake!"

Now there were those of us who hadn't felt any trembling whatsoever. "Are you sure? It could have just been the vibration from the train out behind the building." There was a quick check out the windows to see if the train was there. It wasn't.

"It was an earthquake I tell you!" insisted the first co-worker who made the observation. Quickly a debate arose between those who had felt it versus those who hadn't. Was it a quake or wasn't it?

Immediately a number of people in our little section of the building began logging onto the internet and searched the website of one of the local news stations. They had nothing about the tremor. The debate continued.

A few minutes after the initial event, an article popped up on the news website. The vibration had been felt all over the city, but there was no confirmation that it was an earthquake.

Because there was confirmation of something on the news, the doubters finally began to concede that maybe something happened that they didn't experience. The conversation eventually evolved into stories from those who felt the tremor, and the doubters began eating it up—almost as if they were trying to force themselves to live something that they had missed.

The complete tale is that there was a 5.0 earthquake that occurred near Ottawa, Canada. The seconds long tremor was felt as far south as Pennsylvania, maybe even further.

The interesting thing about the whole experience was watching my co-workers who had not felt the shaking. Despite the number of people in the building who experienced, those people refused to believe it until it was confirmed on the news website. Now, one could hardly blame them—we don't live in an area that is prone to earthquakes, so it was a little bit out of the realm of their realities.

But still, to ignore the evidence of people right next to them in favor of a news agency halfway across the city is just a little odd. People are just a little too detached from the life around them.