Stop Dancing So Hard, You’re Making the Earth Shake or Earthquake, Kids, and Dancing

An earthquake.  Kids.  Oh my.

I live in Southern California, have my whole life, so the word earthquake has been in my vocabulary only a slightly shorter time than the word milk.  

I don’t even remember learning the word, but I do remember being at preschool when I was three, and being told what to do in case of an earthquake.  ”Kids,” my teacher would command as we crouched under our tiny desks and covered our tiny ears with our elbows, “in the event of an earthquake, kids must hide under the desks and don’t come out until the earth stops shaking.

It’s a memory I haven’t thought of in years, but yesterday I had good reason to recall.  

As we’ve already discussed, we’re all connected, so I’m sure anyone reading this already knows that Southern California was struck yesterday by an earthquake.  Kids are fine, don’t worry, though at the time it happened, Daisy and I happened to be dancing with the children.  The music was loud, the toddlers were thumping their feet on the floor, and for a second, neither of us were completely sure  what we thought might be happening, actually was.  

Our eyes met and, without a single word exchanged (and only a single second elapsed since the first tremor), we both started clapping our hands and laughing.  

I said, “You know what would be fun?”  Miss Daisy said, “An earthquake drill!”  So I yelled, “Earthquake!”

Kids started to scream,”Yay!” as each ran to his or her appointed spot.  

Now I’m fairly certain most of you don’t really care to hear about the happenings of a nursery school that’s hundreds, if not thousands of miles away, but I promise, I have a point.  

Our pre-school has drills every so often, not because we expect the worst, but because it would be negligent to live in California and not to be ready for an earthquake.   Kids are wonderful in the way they’ll let you teach them just about anything, as long as you frame the lessons inside a game.  

Every time we have a drill, that’s all it is: a game.  One of us yells “Earthquake!”  

Kids all scamper to their spots.  

Even after it was over (the entire event, start to finish, lasted only seconds), the children had no idea that a real earthquake had just happened, and not one of them (except for Mia who is six and wise to our methods) even asked.  They just thought they’d had what may have been the best dancing session the world had ever known.  

So good, in fact, it moved the house and prompted a drill.  

My point is this:

We can learn a lot from the way children learn and think.  We should render the necessary drills and practices of our own lives into an equivalent amount of fun.  Then, when life throws us an earthquake, kids inside us will be prepared and smiling while we face it.  

Writer Dad  

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