by Gary Dauphin

Someone suggested I write about my "first earthquake," (I've only been in LA for 3 years) but, fortunately, I have nothing to report about the shaking that hit the Los Angeles area July 29. It was my day off, I was walking down Beverly in Los Angeles' Historic Filipinotown district, and I actually didn't feel a thing. The only signs that anything was up were the lack of a voice signal on my cell and the plate glass in the local storefronts, which were undulating and vibrating like speaker cones.

Now that I think about it, my lazy, good-for-nothing cat and dog were lying flat on their sides when I left the house, laid low not by spooky vibes and premonitions, but by their own indolence. No warning whatsoever, no weird barking or meowing - nada, zip, zilch. After the quake, I did receive three, rock-n-roll-ish text messages (SMS runs on a separate network, and didn't clog after the quake the way voice networks did) from friends along the lines of "WELCOME TO LA, SON!!! YEAH!!!", this as if I had just inadvertently completed some arcane rite of passage. "I GUESS..." is what I texted back.

I won't call earthquakes the new welcome wagon, but I got off easy, as did the rest the of area. But what about you? How was your earthquake?