Hurriquake week and assumptions

I was talking to colleagues at work yesterday about the hurriquake week, and we discovered that most of us had immediately assumed the craziest stuff when we felt the earth shaking.

Crazy in the sense that it was the only thing our brains could wrap themselves around in those first few seconds, because we had no earthquake experience to fall back on.

For example, one person was in a car when she felt the shaking, and assumed that she was having car trouble - really bad, peculiar car trouble.

Another was in the house, with a small child who happened to be having a mild temper tantrum at the time, rolling around on the floor and kicking the furniture. Her first thought was that her son was getting awfully strong, since his exertions seemed to be shaking the whole house.

I was at home sitting at the computer, and my initial assumption was that my son upstairs had knocked over a heavy piece of furniture. Now, he has never in his life done such a thing. However, I was at someone's house twenty years ago when her son did knock over a dresser upstairs, and it shook the house - and my mind immediately leaped to this "explanation," even though I hadn't thought about it in decades.

Colleagues who had lived in California, on the other hand, said that their first thought when things started wobbling was simply "Earthquake!"

A good illustration of how we turn to the familiar first when something wholly new occurs.

The next time I have car trouble, though, I'm probably going to think - earthquake!