Making Waves

I rarely pay attention to the news. For instance, it took me two days to realize there had been an earthquake in Haiti. It then took me another two days to figure out where Haiti was. But this past Saturday, when an 8.8 earthquake hit Chile, I was aware of it within about two minutes because the resulting tsunami was projected to slam into my home state of Hawaii. I knew this because my dad called me and woke me up to tell me this. Of course, before noon I rarely am able to comprehend simple sentences, so I went back to sleep. It wasn’t until I woke up about three hours later that I actually realized that “Holy s**t there’s a tsunami headed for Hawaii!”

At this point, I sat on my couch for the rest of the day watching CNN. Most of the coverage was about Chile, which I can understand. Most of the damage occurred there, and if you have ever seen Chile on a map, their country is so skinny that if their buildings fell over they either ended up in Argentina or the Pacific Ocean. I mean seriously; it looks like Argentina just had a phobia of the ocean and so they drew a line fifty feet from the beach and just said “yeah, that isn’t ours.”

JOKE TIME: So two blondes are getting ready to land a plane. The plane touches down and the pilot is instantly forced to bring the plane to a screeching halt. The pilot says “Wow, that sure was a short runway.” And the other blonde says “Yeah, but look how wide it is…”

Anyway, I was mainly watching the news for information about Hawaii. I mean, it can be a little unsettling hearing that a big wave is going to crash into your house, even if you aren’t currently in that house. Because there are other important things in that house that I can’t replace, like my sofa. Oh yeah, and family members too. Hawaii is not one of those places that get a lot of natural disaster scares (which is surprising when you consider that we live on an active volcano). I mean Kansas has tornados, San Francisco has earthquakes, New England has blizzards, Tokyo has Godzilla, and Oakland has the Raiders. So I was a bit freaked out, especially considering how people in Hawaii normally react to emergencies. So was everybody else apparently. There were people all over the internet who expressed their concern for Hawaii. It is nice to see that people can put aside their petty jealousy of people in Hawaii for a few seconds.

And from stories I’ve heard from my friends, it was quite an ordeal. First off, during tsunamis or tsunami drills (which happen once a month), a really loud, really annoying alarm goes off across the state. I mean, this thing wakes up dead people and pisses off the deaf, and it went off for the entire day. Then officials went and personally knocked on the doors of people in high risk areas and basically told them to get their s**t and get out. This is actually kind of funny, because the people who live in high risk areas (on the beach would be one) are either rich or tourists in hotels, neither of which is a group I am particularly fond of. So the thought of them being packed into school buses and evacuated to higher ground in their pajamas makes me happy.

Now a lot of the people I know, being the geniuses that they are, decided the best plan of action was to buy a plate lunch and go watch the tsunami. Now most of these people were high in the mountains watching from scenic points, and I have to be honest, I probably would have done the same thing. But there are idiots, and then there are people who swim on the beach during tsunami warnings, like this retard. I don’t care if you are a tourist and don’t know what is going on; when you see a nice beach in Hawaii empty you can assume one of five things is in the water: a giant shark, a swarm of jellyfish, untreated sewage, a snorkeling rapist, or a giant killer tidal wave (by the way, the “Snorkeling Rapists” would be a cool band name). Now, in this guy’s defense, getting to swim in Waikiki without stepping on five tourists everywhere you go is kind of neat. But still, when a 20-foot wave washes his white butt onto the freeway, I’m definitely not going to feel sorry for him. But at least he got a Facebook fan page out of it.

Luckily, the tsunami never came. It was just another one of those things in Hawaii that everybody thinks will be big but never really pans out, like Michelle Wie (who is actually born on the exact same day as yours truly). I figured that this tsunami was not going to be a big deal when my dad stopped texting me about sirens and waves and started asking me if I had bought him his crocs yet. Not that I am disappointed; I’m very grateful that this tsunami did not hit Hawaii. I mean, could you imagine how bad I would feel if I went back to my home in the mountains and found out that I now was the owner of a beach front property? I would be absolutely devastated.