At first I thought it was the fridge complaining about never ever being full.
It made noises.
Loud noises.
Loud shaking kind of noises that were annoying and vibrated (and not in a good way).
It was one of the few things in the house I hadn’t splurged on and bought a silvery double-doored version of (although I’m not sure what else came with double-doors that I could buy) and had come courtesy of my grandmother via the Kelvinator factory some time back in the forties. The shelves were made of thin strips of metal as opposed to glass, the plastic containers where the vegetables were meant to visit (but never did) were plastic and solid looking, and the freezer did exactly that.
The most modern thing about it was its step-pedal that allowed you to open the fridge without using your hands.
Apart from that it was huge; had taken two guys and three hernias to lug up the stairs, and had a life of its own when it switched itself from ‘dull but acceptable roar’ to a sound similar to a jet engine having swallowed a mouthful water down the wrong way.
So really, it’s completely understandable that I should think that it was the fridge and not the earth that was causing my walls to do the limbo. And sure, in all probability I might have already felt an earthquake at least once in my 42 year tenure in life, but how could I have known it was tectonic plates going at it Greek wedding style and not my own salacious adventures that made the earth shudder?
In the end it was all over pretty quickly – as was the earth tremor – and thankfully the already scary cracks that were beginning to divide my rooms into uneven numbers didn’t spread too far further south.
Ms no-longer-an-earthquake-virgin M.
