Shake, Rattle, and Roll Your Eyes

When the 11 p.m. local news anchors shared the "Breaking News" that there was an earthquake in Jersey last night, I was actually kind of disappointed.

And then when I saw it happened in Morris County, where New Jersey Monthly has its offices, I was annoyed.  Why couldn't it have happened during the day, when I might have had a chance to notice it?  Instead, I was in my home in Maplewood when it happened, watching highlights of Kobe Bryant torching my Knicks, and didn't even feel a shake (if I did, I probably would have assumed it was a plane leaving Newark airport or our ever-startling steam radiators doing their thing).

One of the things I love about New Jersey is that Mother Nature rarely messes with us too much.  Sure, we get the occasional hurricane leftovers, and I've endured a couple of blizzards (when you're a schoolkid, as I was, those are the best things ever anyway). We get our triple-digit temperatures once in a while, and we might have a stretch of a few deep-freeze days. But, for the most part, we have warm summers, crisp autumns, chilly winters with a coating of snow, and pleasantly mild springs (which, at the moment, I can't wait for), all with very little fanfare and few surprises. It's nice.

But Mother Nature's indifference sometimes makes me feel as though we're being ignored.  I'm not saying I want crazy destruction, nor am I trying to downplay the serious dangers that can come from natural disasters, big and small. But feeling an earthquake—even a measly three-pointer—would have been pretty cool.  And I'm kind of sick of these one-to-three-inch snow days.  Give me a heavy snowfall, or give me spring.  None of this in-between stuff. (I'm starting to sound like Andy Rooney here, which was not my original intent, but I suppose it happens to all of us.)

Our place in the natural world is so boring that, prior to the slight rattle in Morris County, the big nature news yesterday was that the temperature hit the 50s, even though it was expected to go no higher than 43.  How earth shaking.

Tags: Morristown | Morristown | Morris County | earthquake