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It was the early ’80s and I was sitting in a seminar class at Mills College. I’m pretty sure it was a journalism class but it could have been romantic poetry. There were maybe 30 of us sitting in a horseshoe arrangement of standard classroom chair-desk combos. At least when we first sat down the chairs were arranged in that configuration.

The professor was lecturing and we were all taking notes when in a split second, half of us were tipped forward face first on to the floor and the other half of us were tipped backward onto the floor. The professor, who had been standing, landed on her butt. Everyone was disconcerted. Everyone screamed. Everyone was unharmed.

That is the first earthquake I remember experiencing.

Just a year or two later and still in college, I lived on the second floor of a building on the third highest hill in San Francisco. On this particular late afternoon I was taking a shower, getting ready to go to work when, while half-bent over and shaving my legs, I experienced another “Elvis moment.”

I was pitched forward into the wall and then tossed backward as the building lurched one way then the other. I dropped the razor and yanked down the shower curtain as the building rolled again. All I could think of as the earth moved under my feet and I struggled to wrap the curtain around myself was that I was going to end up naked in front of my neighbors at the bottom of San Francisco’s third highest hill. I didn’t, but I certainly was “all shook up, mm mm mm, mm, yay, yay, yay.”

There were several other quakes I remember. Once I was driving my car and the road momentarily became a roller coaster. Another time I was in my corporate cubical and my potted plant smashed to the floor.

When the Loma Prieta Earthquake hit in 1989, I had just moved to Oroville. I didn’t feel the quake, but I did feel the aftermath. This newspaper sent me on assignment to The Bay to cover the event. I spent several days walking through the rubble of various neighborhoods, taking photos and talking to people. I stood with a family, strangers to me, near the “Cypress Structure,” a major freeway interchange near the Bay Bridge that had partially collapsed, and witnessed their raw grief as their daughter’s body was extracted from the crushing amounts of concrete and rebar debris. She was the last of the quake’s 63 victims to be found. I was, again, shaken.Related Articles Blinkerlessitas is spreading | Off the Record Let’s get grillin’ | Off the Record Eager sparkles are hellish | Off the Record

In 1994 we had guests over for dinner and were just discussing the previous week’s Northridge Earthquake in Southern California when, an unbalanced load of laundry hit the spin cycle with tremendous thudding that shook the house. You’ve never seen four adults scramble so fast to all get under one table as pasta, salad, French bread, plates and wine glasses crashed to the floor. Our hands were shaky and our knees were weak. We were a little mixed up but (ended up) feelin’ fine.

Living here in the north state it’s been many years since I concerned myself about earthquakes, too busy worrying about floods and fires, mostly fires. That is until a week ago Friday when, like my neighbors here in east Oroville, I experienced Elvis entering the building. Actually, more like he crashed into it.

It was a magnitude 4.2 so not huge on the Richter scale but big enough to bump me off the sofa and the toss the fish out of his bowl. I thought something had exploded. (It hadn’t.) I thought something had hit the house. (It hadn’t) I thought I better get that fish back in water. (I did) And then, I thought that damn dam better freaking hold. (It did)

The last earthquake that shook Oroville was a 5.1 in 1975 but, apparently, there are roughly 500,000 earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 2.5 to 5.4 annually. It would be totally OK with me (and Albert the Fish) if we didn’t have another one here again for 47 years. I love The King and all but, I’ve been all shook up enough for one lifetime.

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