I Feel the Earth Move

A good friend and I often discuss the perks of moving to San Francisco: proximity to skiing and family, west coast vibe and temperate weather.  His inexplicable fear of earthquakes, though, keeps him grounded east while wistfully considering a westerly relocation.  Ironically, he was visiting his brother in the Bay when the earthquake hit New York on Tuesday. This coastal confusion may make it harder to keep him in the city.

The bookshelves in my room started quaking, and my first thought was: “if my classroom library that I’ve spent hours organizing starts to implode, I’m quitting.” A vision of my body uncovered days later from beneath 80 copies of The Giver flitted through my mind. Teachers popped their heads out of classrooms, and when we determined the movement was probably not the ongoing cafeteria construction reverberating from the first to fifth floor, a scared East Coaster screamed “Earthquake!”

In Portland Public Schools, we practiced earthquake more than fire.  In case of an earthquake, we learned in kindergarten to duck under the desk, stand in a door jam or cover your head with your hand if jams and desks were taken.  One of the best exhibits at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is the replica of a cute little house. Every fifteen minutes, Eartha Kitt’s “I feel the Earth Move Under my Feet” blasts through the fake house as the floor and cupboards start to shake beneath you.  This way, Oregonians learn the value of earthquake-proofing their homes.  In college, I flirted with danger on a campus perched on the San Andreas fault line. I was frequently reminded via campus-wide e-blast to pack my earthquake kit in case things got shaky.  Unsurprisingly, I never did.   

My 35-person staff streamed out of PS16 and immediately started checking the news on their Blackberries, calling relatives in Virginia and updating Facebook statuses with earthquake witticisms (guilty).  Californians and wannabes (guilty, again) played it cool, chilling in the sun and fielding questions from confused New Yorkers who’d never gotten down with Eartha Kitt. A Louisiana coworker asked about these strange “hurricanes of the North.” We waited outside for the Tremor Team to tell us it was okay to get back to lesson planning.  Meanwhile, my coworker brought me an iced coffee from Marlow and Sons, and I couldn’t help but wonder why earthquakes don’t happen more often in Williamsburg.    

The best part of the whole ordeal was an exciting revelation from inside our very building.  Sitting beside us outside school was a group of people who looked decidedly un-teacherly: leather fedoras, canes, short skirts, caked on makeup and lots of filming equipment.  After much hushed speculation, a coworker worked up the nerve to politely ask what this crew was doing at our school.  Apparently (and obviously?), they’re filming Trickadee’s latest rap music video on the second floor; they are, in fact, Trickadee’s sizeable entourage of backup dancers.  The guy in the burnt orange suit? Trickadee himself.  We believe Trickadee is a rapper play on chickadee, but then again we’re mostly white. 

I recognize that the earthquake and the impending hurricane are probably signs of the upcoming rapture or the Mayan Calendar’s end of days, but in the short term the earthquake panned out pretty well for me. I got to hang outside for an hour in the sun with hipster coffee, flex my West Coast knowledge and learn about a hot new rap artist whose hit music video will feature the famed hallways of PS16. What but the 2011 NYC earthquake can I thank for all this? Gotta give credit where credit’s due.