Earthquake Drama

I woke up to a grey skies outside my window.  Another cold day in Tokyo.  I made and took calls, wrote e-mails, finished a report, and got ready for my lunch appointment.  A childhood friend who called me butterfingers as I let the basketball slip through my grasp, we didn't get along well when we were in our teens.  Now an accomplished journalist and bureau chief of a major foreign news outlet in Tokyo, we were going to get caught up.  I made my way to our rendezvous point as my phone started to ring.  Taking calls on trains is a no-no in Japan.  I answered anyway, keeping my voice low.
"Something's happened in North Korea," he says.
"No problem.  We'll reschedule."  I got off at that station and began retracing my steps home.

Cue internet searches on what happened in North Korea.
"M4.9 seismic activity reported" reads a headline.  It was my next reaction that step off a chain reaction.

"Pffft.  M4.9.  That's nothing.  We go through worse, bigger earthquakes here all the time."
That's what I thought.  Really.  Now, for the record, I am sorry.  Truly sorry.  This is wrong.  That it wasn't an earthquake, per se, but a nuclear test isn't the point.  I am now guilty of earthquake superiority.  I've become an earthquake snob.  This is not okay.

There is surely a psychological word describing the process in which within thirty seconds, one's mind ticks off a chain reaction of memories.  Walking past a cafe, I see a slice of apple pie.  This takes me right back to my grandmother's kitchen smelling of cinnamon and nutmeg, warm with more than just the heat from the oven.  This takes me to the time I was in third grade when walking home from school I passed a hair salon encountering a scent I had only smelled in my great aunt's kitchen.  Bliss.  This took me to my best friend of the time, Yumi walking that same route for four years.  Remembering Yumi took me back to the time we fought about her skin allergy. (Why?)  I didn't like Yumi much.  That reminded me of my other best friend, this one from sixth grade.  Her, I liked.  Which reminded me of the little book of rules we had to carry around in middle school, making sure our hair did not touch our collars, and our bangs above our eyebrows.  Enter the drama surrounding hair cutting in our home.  Always wanting to experiment, I needed my father's permission to go short.  Next, I think about the time I grew my hair out into a bob ten years ago or so, thinking I needed hair in order to look feminine.  My husband pops into my mind next with his words, "Don't ever let your hair grow long again.  You look much better with short hair."  And, now I'm wondering if I need another hair cut.

All that in thirty seconds.  This isn't the jog down memory lane I took today, but rather an example of how fast our minds recall incidents otherwise inconsequential but clearly tucked away only to be pulled out when there's a trigger.  Today, my reaction to the M4.9 "earthquake" in North Korea jump-started a similar process.

I remember back to a time an associate of mine, finding she was pregnant said to me, "I'll lose my gold status on the airlines and hotels now.  I won't be able to travel for at least a year."  I believe I shot back with "You've become quite the travel snob" reeling at how her priorities were as horribly askew.  Today, the word "snob" also applies to me.  Word and memory association stopped there today.  I was stuck on the the fact I've become a snob.

Who gets her socks knotted up into a bunch over "who's earthquake is bigger"?  Where's the concern, sympathy, and genuine hope no one was injured?  Why did my mind jump to competing over the size of an earthquake as opposed to valuing human life?  I'm ashamed.  I'm embarrassed.  I'm also more than a bit peeved with myself.

The conclusion I've come to over my little mental connect-the-dots snafu is this:  I'm reminded all over again I've simply become complacent.  When leaving my apartment, I no longer ask myself if I'd really like to walk home in these shoes if the trains stop running.  I used to, and in the summer would carry around a pair of flip-flops, just in case.  I don't carry extra cash around knowing if there's a massive black out, shutting down banks for days or even weeks I'll certainly need cash to survive.  There are earthquakes somewhere in Japan every day.  While I can't live my life always worrying about "the big one" I similarly can't be as laissez-faire as I am about the fact there will be consequences to having an uncharged cell phone, no cash, and heels that will leave me with blisters the size of Montana if I have to walk more than a kilometer.

North Korean nuclear tests aside, the mental exercise I took today jolted me back into a mode of consciousness  I've been lax about of late.  And, I hope everything's okay in North Korea.  Not in the, oh-go-test-another-bomb-why-don't-you way, but in that the people there, the ones who don't have a say are really okay.