Tragically Captivating

The general rule of thumb is never travel with my sister. Bad things happen. I have threatened to call Homeland Security on her numerous times because of the amount of terrorism attacks she seems to attract. The terrorism has been replaced by natural disasters in recent years, attracting a number of small, yet noticeable, earthquakes. Apparently Mother Nature hates Caroline and her typical western lifestyle even more than Osama.

On Friday I was watching The Olympics with my mom when my man Costas informed me that we were going to be cutting away for a newsbreak. My mom moaned and said "oh great, there's probably been an earthquake in Japan". We laughed and I set to work searching to internet to find out what the newsbreak might be. After CNN and NY Times gave me nothing, I went to MSNBC to see a giant red banner reading "7.3 magniture earthquake off the coast of Japan".

I dissolved into hysterical laughter, in retrospect probably not the right response but it was truly funny to me. Mom asked me what I was laughing about and I realized that I was going to have to break the news to her about the earthquake, most likely sending her into a fit of worries until Caroline called with news that she was safe. Rather than tell her, I just laughed harder. Finally I managed to get some words out about the earthquake. My mom did not think it was nearly as funny as I did. Even funnier? The newsbreak was about the governor of New York.

Mom spent the next hours frantically checking the internet for updates before we got an e-mail from Caroline. "yea....there was an earthquake. I kinda slept through it. I just thought it was some trucks." She continued on to tell us how great the sushi was in Japan. Winner.

Unfortunately for Caroline I'm going to stop talking about her now and rather use her story as an introduction to my thoughts on the weekends events.

After finding out that Caroline was indeed fine I went off to my friend Nicky's place. I usually spend Friday nights with her at the bar located in her dorm (excellent location for a bar, btw). Inevitably I wind up spending the night in her room...I keep a sleeping bag and pillow in the trunk of my car at all times just in case this happens. That sleeping bag is the best 15 dollars I've ever spent.

I digress.

I wandered home on Saturday morning and was preparing a giant mug of coffee when my parents came in from walking the dogs. My mom had a grim look on her face and asked if I had heard about the earthquake. I assumed she meant the one in Japan and reminded her that "yes, I did hear about that" then made a mental note to call several area old folks homes to set up informational meetings. She went on to tell me about the Chile earthquake and the subsequent tsunami warnings for Hawaii.

I made a beeline for the television, as is the custom when there is a disaster somewhere in the world, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Chile seemed to be handling the destruction as well as it could be. Now, 4 days later, we are seeing the destruction and chaos that is normally associated post earthquake, but the initial images of post-earthquake Chile were disturbingly calm and organized. People almost seemed to be treating it like we did the Snowpocalypse...it was a nuisance, but intriguing. In the background of some shots you could even see traffic flowing as if it were any other day. Truthfully, they were handling it far better than we did the Snowpocalypse. As the fatality numbers continue to rise and the actual situation begins to set it, it's clear that those hopeful first reports were nothing more than a pipe dream.

What captivated me the most about these news reports, however, was the news that a tsunami was heading straight for Hawaii. Even more captivating....they had an exact time that it would hit. We could literally have a tsunami countdown. The rest of the day was spent checking the clock, counting down the hours until the tsunami. I resisted the urge to imagine a stereotypical tsunami wave, the size of a ten story building, crashing into the Hawaii beachfront. I assured myself that it would be nothing like the tsunami that crashed into Thailand a few years ago. That it would just be a little surge of water, nothing all that interesting. Still I counted down, waited, frantically tried to dissect the charts and graphs that "experts" were parading across tv to try and determine the effect that it would have on Hawaii.

The tsunami was supposed to hit at 4pm est. At 3:30 my family sat down at our tv to watch. We flicked back and forth to try and determine which channel would give us the best coverage. I'm ashamed to admit we decided against MSNBC solely because we wouldn't be able to see the tsunami in HD. My family has decidedly different political views and preferred news channels are often a subject of contention. Over this non-political issue my mom gladly suggested that maybe Fox news would be best while my father assured her that CNN would be more than fine. Eventually we decided on the BBC, however they were more interested in the day's soccer (excuse me, football) match than the tsunami watch in the South Pacific. Bollocks.

The next 45 minutes were thus spent flipping back and forth between Fox News and CNN. All this taught me is that there are no news crews in Hawaii. The only footage anyone had of the beach was courtesy of Skype. Even better it was courtesy of the Skype of an MMA fighter. You're telling me that out of all the high rise hotels and helicopters circling above the ocean, no news channel could have gotten a camera out there? Who am I to complain, though, people were actually using their heads for once. News channels respected the severity of a tsunami and refused to send crews out to the frontlines. Meanwhile I sat safely thousands of miles away from both the destruction of the earthquake and the possible destruction of Hawaii and complained. I am truly a terrible person sometimes.

And so we sat. And waited. And watched. We studied the shots of the ocean and offered our own expert advice. In one shot the water had receded a little....in another we swore you could CLEARLY see the tsunami on the horizon. 4 o clock came and went. We waited. It was sick when you think about it. We knew what we were waiting for wasn't supposed to be all that impressive, yet we waited in case it was. No one wanted to see Hawaii harmed in any way, but we wanted to see something we had never seen before.

Gradually Mom left to go bake a cake, then OMP left to go...I don't know, do OMP things like write books and curse in Polish at Communist youtube videos. I stayed, I watched, then eventually I left as well. It never hit me that the wave never came. Eventually something else caught my attention and I moved on. It wasn't until the next morning that I realized I had spent my whole afternoon waiting for something that never happened.

I want to have a deep ending to this blog entry about the fragility of life and the power of Mother Nature, but I think that's a given. Rumor has it the Pope's Catholic as well. Death and destruction from natural disasters are givens...so why, if they're so unpleasant, are we drawn to them? I don't have an answer, all I can do is offer my advice for television executives. While Dancing With the Stars is great......nothing will guarentee my attention more than a sudden tsunami warning.

And yes. I do worry about what this says about me as a person....