All Shook Up

Tiffany and I went to the California Academy of Sciences a few nights ago. If you haven't been, it's amazing. Right now it has this exhibit about earthquakes with an earthquake simulation called the Shake House. The Academy has been advertising the Shake House all over town, almost like it was an amusement park ride.

There's nothing really amusing about earthquakes. I've only been in a couple of mild ones, but Tiffany was in a terrible 8.4 in Peru, and so I could not, for the life of me, get her to stand in line to be shaken on the magnitude of San Francisco's massive earthquakes of 1989 and 1906. Not even by first taking her through the exhibit about safety (FYI, in case of an earthquake, toilet tank water is safe to drink. Toilet bowl water is not. Also, peanut butter really is a good item for your earthquake preparedness kit, just like I thought.). We got out of line.

It was a special night at the Academy. In celebration of gay pride, there was a drag show going on and we decided to experience that instead. Only, when I went to get drinks, they closed the doors to the drag show and wouldn't let me in, even when I made my most sad face. I pressed my forehead up against the glass and Tiffany did the same on the other side and I mouthed to her that I was going to the Shake House.

"What?" she yelled soundlessly.

I shook my body from head to toe.

"Oh," she nodded. She made her most sad face.

It was a lonely walk to the Shake House. But Tiffany and I have an emergency plan for what would happen if we were not together in a real earthquake. Not being together in a fake earthquake seemed trivial in comparison. Besides the drag show was just a few exhibits away.

I had only been waiting in line a couple of minutes when Tiffany appeared at my side.

"Hi," she said.

I broke out into a grin.

"You don't have to..."

"I know."

The Shake House was not too scary to me, except for the fact the there were 30 other people in the tiny space with us. Tiffany didn't like it. She gripped my arms with sweaty palms and almost ran over some poor woman on her way out the Shake House door.

Afterwards, we roamed the rest of the Academy and happened on an exhibit with pictures of the animals that have lived on the earth over the ages. It was the strangest thing... one of the animals looked just exactly like Tiffany in the Shake House.

Tiffany in the Shake House.