A Scheduled Earthquake

Matt had blunderous fun at school today. At approximately 10:15 am, in the midst of Spanish class, there was a campus wide earthquake drill- there had been posters plastered all over campus for weeks to advertise- and siren's went off and all students had to find shelter. However, Matt's desk was NOT earthquake friendly.

It was a chair with a tiny swing down desk, and it took him a good 30 seconds to situate himself- he lay down on his back, with head and torso under the chair- until his professor hollered out "Anyone on their back is probably gonna die!" So Matt tried to scrunch up in a ball. It was fairly awkward and he wondered if his underwear was showing since his shirt was riding up his back. Trying not to dwell on this, he turned to his neighbor who was scrunched in like manner.

"How are you today?" he asked politely.

She brushed her now dishelved hair out of her face before responding. "I'm good. How funny is this though, my friend is getting her wisdom teeth out today, and when she heard that there was an earthquake drill planned, she got pissed and said "I really wish I would have known that there was going to be an earthquake! I would have chosen a different day to have surgery."

"Oh my lanta, are you kidding me?! She really believed that there was going to be an earthquake today, like we just happen to know when there's gonna be one?"

"Yup," laughed his neighbor.

After that was the evacuation. As he and his classmates began to file in the halls of the library, they turned to go down one corridor to an exit, only to find a strict librarian with pointy glasses yelling "You can't exit this way, there are gas pipelines!" Instead they wandered the long way through to the other exit. As they finally stepped outside, away from the loud sirens, they found that it was raining. Just perfect. Normally on principal Matt doesn't use umbrellas as he finds it un-stylish toting one around. Luckily though he had brought one today. He found that he was suddenly quite popular with classes mates who have previously never spoken to him.

After 5 minutes of huddling in the rain, a bossy man approached the group. "If you're students you need to go to the emergency evacuation point. It's a tent in the parking lot past the business building."

Matt gave the man an incredulous look. "Is this really necessary? That's halfway across campus. Won't the library open back up soon?"

"I'm sorry, but it's part of the drill. Besides, if you go to the tent you get a free bag of Shwag!" A bag of what?? No-one seemed to know what "Shwag" consisted of, and the man had bounded away before they could figure out.

Hoping that it was a bag of treats, Matt and his classmates shlumped through the mud and puddles, and it was during this time that he discovered he had a hole in his left shoe. 10 minutes later they arrived to a tent set up in a parking lot.

There were dozens and dozens of people huddled around. Matt politely butted his way to the front and asked where the bags of shwag were. "Sorry, we ran out," responded a stressed girl who was attempting to control the masses. "Here, take a water bottle though" she said as she pressed a plastic bottle in his hands.

All Matt could do was laugh as he walked back to the library, minus his bag of shwag. His socks were wet for at least 3 hours afterwards. What a blunder! Next time maybe they should plan for the earthquake to happen on a sunny day...