Last week, we felt a few tremors in Berkeley big enough to go, “Oh my god!” (The “g’ is lowercase and intentional.)
I wasn’t born on a fault line. That would be an awesome metaphor. But I live on one of the big ones, The Hayward Fault. They say it runs right under the UC Berkeley football stadium. Tectonic plates that go up and down; the more dangerous kind. I hope you’re not waiting for a more scientific explanation because though I get very excited talking about phrases like, subduction zone and oceanic plates my knowledge doesn’t go much deeper into science.
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These bits are what I remember from a college Oceanography class: I drove a white 323 Mazda, “The Egg” and had a flu during our final, which took place on a boat going around marshland in (?) the Peninsula. The professor had been clear: No excuses.
That and tectonic plates.
Tectonic plates are tangible. There’s a solid reason why earthquakes happen.
When is still a mystery.
I took Oceanography 101 and the flu-boat five years after holding my sister under our bedroom doorway. I told my brother down the hall to stay under his. After school, we were all home except for our father.
Our mother ran up and down another hallway crying and praying to Mother Mary.
When Dad got home, I reported, “I guess we’re on our own.”
He laughed.