At 11:42 am today, I was on my way to the barber shop. I had in fact just arrived and was tying up my bicycle (go green!) when a couple of people came out of the shop and looked around, as if making sure everything was okay.

"Day-um, that was a good one," said Tashie, the lady who puts the twists in my hair.

"It felt like this," said another girl, swerving her hips like she was hula-hooping.

This could only mean one thing: the barber shop orgy ended right before I arrived. Wait.

A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 jolted large parts of Southern California late this morning, shaking a wide swath from Ventura County to San Diego and causing minor damage and a few injuries.

The quake rattled buildings in downtown Los Angeles and was felt as far east as Palm Springs. It was centered near Chino Hills, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. [source: Los Angeles Times]

All right. Los Angeles just experienced a middle-magnitude quake and I didn’t even feel it.

KCAL-9 News was reporting a 5.8 on the Richter scale.

"That wasn’t no five point eight," said a dude checking his text messages.

Tashie’s husband walked in. "Y’all feel that? That was me." Okay, I guess it’s probably for the best I didn’t "feel that."

Seriously, this would have been the most exciting thing since every second of the Dark Knight and I completely missed it. That wouldn’t have happened if I were at the place where I usually am at 11:42am on Tuesdays: a bar, browbeating a cocktail waitress. "You call this a Manhattan? I said shaken, not stirred!" She picks it up. Earthquake happens. Then I snatch it out of her hand, mumbling that’s more like it, keep ‘em coming.

"You all remember the Northridge quake? I ain’t never seen so many people out in the street that early in the morning," said the texting dude.

I remember the Northridge quake. That winter, rain had been coming down for two weeks straight and finally ceased a few days before January 17, 1994.

At 4:30 that morning the noisy rocking of the house woke me up. My five hundred heaviest books fell off the shelf and onto my bed. At that point, I figured, the worst part’s done, and rolled over back to sleep. Then my mom woke me up and handed me a flashlight. The next day our roof caved in.

 

Back in the here and now, about 20 minutes after today’s quake, the whole thing was filed and forgotten. I was sitting there, bored, while my stylist checked her cellphone. Across the room, some chronic ass was giving a civics lecture to a captive audience — a guy whose hair he was cutting. The news was still going on and on with the camera trained on a seismograph. Someone turned up the radio. "You know one rapper I never liked? Jay-Z," said Tashie. Earthquake or no, I hate it when barbers try to make small talk.

An hour later, the Silver Bullet texted me.

You know what’s funny? When the earthquake started, I immediately went to the hallway doorframe and held on to the tv. Shows you my priorities.

I don’t understand the issue. That’s not "funny." That’s not even unusual. I’ve seen her teevee. It’s flat and it’s big and it’s brand new. She did exactly what any of us would do in the same situation. Natural disasters always bring out our best. That’s why, when I go to Best Buy, I do the exact same thing; wait for an earthquake, then hold on to a TV. In a world that no longer has any use for heroes, I am a legend.