4:30 a.m., I was 9 years old and I decided to sleep on the couch that night. My sister was having a sleepover with her friends as a late birthday celebration. I hadn’t told anyone that I wasn’t in my room so when the walls started shaking and my dresser fell over and blocked the door to my bedroom, my mother freaked out and almsot ripped the door from its hinges. I calmy told her I was on the couch as soon as I realized that she was looking for me. All the dishes had shaken out of the cabinets, our entertainment center was face down in the living room, my brother, not even a year old at the time, had no idea what happened. We tried to hurry and get our shoes on in the dark, my mom was telling us we had to get out of our second floor apartment before there was another aftershock. One of my sisters friends asked what an aftershock was, and she didn’t have to wait long to find out.
We camped out on the lawn for the rest of the morning and the next night. The sewers still on fire, the sirens coming from all directions, and little old me, sitting there wondering why we decided to live on the San Andreas fault. It was one of those things that adults remember as a tragedy but us kids remember as ‘the good ol’ days’.
Monday, January 17, 1994
4:30 a.m., I was 9 years old and I decided to sleep on the couch that night. My sister was having a sleepover with her friends as a late birthday celebration. I hadn’t told anyone that I wasn’t in my room so when the walls started shaking and my dresser fell over and blocked the door to my bedroom, my mother freaked out and almsot ripped the door from its hinges. I calmy told her I was on the couch as soon as I realized that she was looking for me. All the dishes had shaken out of the cabinets, our entertainment center was face down in the living room, my brother, not even a year old at the time, had no idea what happened. We tried to hurry and get our shoes on in the dark, my mom was telling us we had to get out of our second floor apartment before there was another aftershock. One of my sisters friends asked what an aftershock was, and she didn’t have to wait long to find out.
We camped out on the lawn for the rest of the morning and the next night. The sewers still on fire, the sirens coming from all directions, and little old me, sitting there wondering why we decided to live on the San Andreas fault. It was one of those things that adults remember as a tragedy but us kids remember as ‘the good ol’ days’.