Washington State... No, the One on the West Coast

Living in

Washington
State

really does have its drawbacks sometimes. The first one that comes to mind for almost any resident of this state would be how much we're overlooked by other people in the country. Half the time people can't even remember that we're a real state. We're kind of like the
West Virginia
of the west coast.

When I was 18 I moved from
Washington
in an attempt to strike out on my own and make my mark on the world. Naturally the best way for me to do this is move to
Indiana
in the middle of winter but that's another story entirely. Out of all the things that shocked me when I moved to Indiana it was the amount of times that I had to remind people that
Washington
was a real state out west. I really can't count the amount of times that a conversation I was in would start with how I just moved from
Washington
and the next thing that I would get asked was "Wow, have you ever seen the president?" No, not WashingtonDC,

Washington
State

… over on the west coast. "Oh right… so did you?" Yeah, I'm going to look this way now. Please be gone when I turn around.

The drawback to living in this state that I'm mostly referring to however is just how dangerous of a state this place is to live in. Sure, other places have to deal with plenty of dangerous things but we get to deal with the most I think. Between the world's most dangerous volcano, landslides, wind storms, nuclear missles from North Korea, tsunamis, hippies, computer geeks, yuppies, earthquakes and morning drivers who are attempting to drink Starbucks, engage in a conference call, shave and drive with their knee while banging their heads on the steering wheel after finding out that the Mariners lost again… we got our fair share of natural disasters to deal with.

Last week,
Hawaii
had to deal with an earthquake of their own and it was a big one coming in at over 6 on the Richter scale. Now thankfully no one was hurt in this but hearing about it really made me start to think about the earthquakes we've had in
Washington
. Admittedly they don't happen very often but when they do, they tend to be rather big.

One in particular that I remember happened shortly after I got back from
Indiana
(Again, another story). I was lying in bed passed out asleep when I opened my eyes and noticed that my waterbed was rolling around quite a bit. Oddly enough my first reaction in my half asleep daze was 'hmm, someone is standing next to my bed and shaking it in an effort to annoy me. I'll show them, I'm going to go back to sleep!' About two seconds later I realized that I was alone in my room and the entire room was shaking. I finally realized then that it was an earthquake. To which I said 'oh, an earthquake.' And went back to sleep.

Later that day I talked to a few friends of mine who were still in high school and asked them what it was like at school during the earthquake. Most of my friends were at lunch at the time so there was lots of panic and scrambling to get under folding tables that couldn't stop a tennis ball dropped from six feet, let alone a pillar from the ceiling and rumor has it that one teacher panicked so bad that he pushed one of his students out from under a desk and climbed under himself. Such bravery but then again, I went to public school.

Thinking back on this though I think the thing that had me most curious though is what some of these kids were thinking when the earthquake happened and they realized how screwed they were. I mean, I remember doing the duck and cover drills back in grade school. The teacher would randomly scream 'earthquake' and everyone in the room would instinctively climb under their desks and tuck their heads in. It was a great plan back in grade school when we actually fit under our desks but then I thought to high school and realized, wow… the football and rugby teams are screwed unless they're wearing their helmets in class. And since some of these guys weren't wearing their helmets during the game, I doubt they wore them in class.

At least one thing was cleared up on that day; I now know why they stopped doing those duck and cover drills back in Jr high. It saved them the trouble of coming up with a better idea when they realized half of us didn't fit!