The Odyssey: Earthquake Edition

At first I thought someone was just kicking the desk. The interns are in a tiny office, we’re used to things like that. Then, things began to slide. The shaking grew stronger. The three of us looked at each other, in a “It’s not just me, right?” moment. Quiet. Papers float lazily to the floor.

The Congressman appears in the doorway. “Guys, we gotta go.”

The staff is already in the hallway. They’ve had emergency training, and that training says to either hide or run. When you’re on the 7th floor like us, you run.

It’s not until I see the faces surrounding me as people flood down the stairs that everything goes cold and all I think about is my hand grasping the rail and my feet tapping the marble stairs. Once outside, everyone whips out their cell phones and find out that it wasn’t an attack--it was an earthquake.

I don’t whip out my cellphone, because all my phone does is call people, and it was also with all of my belongings still in the office. It was almost amusing watching the masses of congressional staffers exclaim, “Oh no! MY BLACKBERRIES!” practically in unison.

A half-hour later, we were still outside and the wait wasn’t looking promising. The initially terrifying situation turned into an excuse to party. Staffers passed us carrying boxes of Coronas and Bud Light from the nearby liquor store. We started brainstorming possible headlines and the inevitable puns that would be used throughout the news for days to come. Their favorite possibility was “Congressman Returns to Save Interns!”

Waiting outside was getting, well, hot. Luckily, this is DC and everyone has connections. And this is how I ended up in former Congressman Moore’s townhouse, taking refuge from the sun.  The Congressman and his wife were just about the sweetest people I have ever met, and they took an entire office of people they hadn’t met before, gave the older ones beers and the younger ones, like myself, colas.

Once we were notified that the offices wouldn’t be opening until late that night, I decided I had to strike out on my own to find my father. I borrowed a phone to call Dad, who gave me simple directions which unfortunately involved roads that were closed (Independence) and roads that didn’t actually connect to Independence at all. These understandable mishaps, combined with my horrible-terrible sense of direction, resulted in my wandering southwest DC for quite some time--moneyless, phoneless, slightly panicky, and in extremely uncomfortable shoes.  Finally, the good folks at the Department of Education were able to give me good directions, and I shuffled up to my Dad’s office, cranky and tired. He did his fatherly duty and sent me on my way with a metro card, a phone, and an old copy of “Sports Illustrated.”

The metro, which typically experiences delays if someone sneezes in Virginia, was shockingly still running. It was going at an extremely reduced speed. This is understandable, because there was like, um, an earthquake or whatever. But it still took me so long to get home that my dad, who left far after I did, beat me home on his bike. I immediately collapsed on the couch. That is how most of my stories end.

Thus ends my own personal Odyssey, alternatively titled: “How I survived an earthquake and got evacuated and went to a congressman’s house and then got lost in uncomfortable shoes.”