Joshua*, my Psychic Earthquake Detector.
For those of you living in a cave, somewhere outside of the North Eastern United States; the DC Metro area had a fairly significant** earthquake yesterday. While noticeable seismic activity in this area is a bit rare, we did have a much smaller quake last July. Other than college I have spent my life in the DC area, and I can’t ever recall anything like these last two quakes. Nothing that I ever felt, or that I can recall receiving anywhere near this much press.
So on to the psychic detector. Josh has mentioned last year’s earthquake a few times, but not in a long time. It wasn’t as big as yesterday’s, and when your 4, a year is a long time. Yesterday Melissa took the kids to the Chesapeake Bay to visit a friend. We just got back from an wonderful trip to the beach where you have to cross said bay. So if anything would be popping into his head on that trip, you would think it would be our recent vacation. Not so much. When they were driving there, Josh randomly asked Melissa if she remembers the Earthquake from last summer. This was several hours before the Earthquake hit. Then after it happened he told Melissa he knew it was coming; he felt it when he was sleeping.
I love science and I pride myself on my ability to think critically. But I’m not so arrogant to discount the possibility that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I understand confirmation bias, and I understand statistically with all of the kids in the area, someone might randomly have asked about last years quake. It could simply be the equivalent of winning the lottery. The title of the post was more than a little tongue in cheek. I have no idea if it was coincidence or something outside the realm of current science. Honestly when I hear about things like this, I tend to dismiss them. I’m a bit cynical, whether by nature, or to many years of doing employee relations/investigations. People’s perceptions are often skewed, and still others are just plain liars. So take this for what it is, a very cool anecdote.
* I picked the picture of Josh passed out at dinner on our recent vacation because he claims to have dreamt the earthquake was coming. That and I think it is adorable.
** I know it wasn’t significant by west coast standards but a friend of mine, Stephanie of Dialmforminky summoned up pretty eloquently why it was significant for us here
