The Hippo Heckles:: Tweet or Toot?

I’ve always dismissed Twitter, thinking of it less as a site for social skills strengthening and more as a gathering of egomaniacs – you know, those people who truly believe that everyone honestly cares what they have to say 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

(To be honest…I know I don’t.

…Though, I can also admit that no one wants me to detail every single second of my own personal life, either.)

Well, the dismissing stops here. I, the hippo, am here to heckle. Yes, folks, you’ve got it – I’ll give you a chance to mark your calendars – today is the day when I, a future attorney, admit that I was wrong.

Today, there was an earthquake centered in a small town near Richmond, VA that measured a 5.8 on the Richter scale. This number, according to the scale, is classified as a “moderate” earthquake: one that could cause major damage to poorly-constructed buildings.

Well, shit. To a short girl from Florida whose number one fear is of falling, it felt a bit more than moderate.

But, also being from Florida, I had no idea what was happening until a few minutes after it occurred. Had I been on Twitter, I might have been able to see the 40,000 earthquake-related Tweets that were posted 1 minute after the earthquake or less.

There are currently no fatalities or major building damages reported, but, according to the Associated Press, the Washington Monument has a crack near the top of the obelisk and will be closed indefinitely to maintain the safety of the public.

I was in my Legal Research and Writing class (LRW) on the third floor of my law school with a 3L Dean’s Fellow as a teacher. First, the building started to shake, and my classmates and I looked at one another in bewilderment, searching (in vain) for an answer.

“It’s the construction down the street,” some said, but I was a bit skeptical. If construction down the street causes my building to rumble, we’ve got some issues.

Then, the rumbling was joined by a swaying motion. I was on the third floor of a building. A building that was swaying.

“They didn’t train me for this,” the 3L said, half-jokingly, half-scared.
After about 30 seconds, the swaying stopped and we students roamed into the hallway in a subdued sort of panic. The fire alarms began to blare, and outside we filed.

It was one of the scariest moments in my life.

This moment comes in close comparison to having my life threatened by a native Peruvian because he didn’t like white people (direct translated quote). It matched the anxiety that I feel on airplanes. And it was all because I wasn’t in control.

When a man that I barely know roams the outdoor living space mere feet from my lock-less bedroom, I am not in control of the situation. When a plane is 45,000 feet in the air, I can control neither its speed nor its descent.
When the earth moves under my feet (and the sky comes tumbling down)…there is absolutely nothing that I can do.

It was one of the absolute worst moments in my world, and I can only imagine what the Japanese must have felt like nearly six months ago. And I didn’t even feel the helplessness of the unforgiving strength of a tsunami.

*

On a bit of a happier note (and to add some pictures, since I’ve been remiss with the onslaught of my first law school assignments), here are some things that you might find on a typical eight-block walk from 21st and O streets and 20th and H.

You might call this a surveying transit. It measures distance and elevation and allows road surveyors to build safe roads. It also allows Peruvian archaeologists (and probably archaeologists anywhere) to measure appropriately where a dig will take place. (This brought back some memories from a year ago).