Incredulity

Last night, I was in the basement talking to my brother on the phone when all of a sudden, Margaret came downstairs and asked me if I'd just felt the earthquake! I hadn't felt a thing and so I asked her if maybe it was the wind (as there was a storm blowing outside) or that maybe I was doing my aerobics a little too vigorously. Anyway, I went online and, sure enough, there HAD been an earthquake, right under the city. I went upstairs (after wiping the egg off my face, which is never flattering) and told her she hadn't been imagining things. In fact, the US Geologic Service had 1500 people enter the "Did you feel it?" link on their website.

That reminds me of a time when a friend and I were driving somewhere in Provo when I was going to BYU. We were driving on a road that bordered the campus, where there are lots and lots of students walking back and forth to classes. Well, as we were driving, we noticed that all the people we drove by were gawking up in the sky. At first we thought, "Saps! What kind of rube just stares at a sunset like that?" Then as we saw even more people doing the same thing, we start thinking that maybe it's an alien invasion force, or a scene out of Red Dawn. Finally, we came to a stop sign and my friend leaned out the window and asked someone what the fuss was. The girl replied, "It's the SPACE SHUTTLE!" Without even turning around, my friend said, "Uh, I'm from FLORIDA! I don't think it's the space shuttle!" (Since one's proximity to Cape Kennedy is a determiner of knowning the exact whereabouts of all the US space craft.) Anyway, I looked in the rear view mirror and, sure enough, it WAS the space shuttle. It was attached to a 747 and was landing in Salt Lake for some event. Boy was my friend sheepish after that. Now when someone tells him something incredible, he's a little more likely to believe it. Which is why you will find him in the middle of the Utah desert with a Mormon fundamentalist cult. Evidently their prophet was telling his followers that the source of his powers was some God Dust he scraped off the space shuttle when it was in Utah.