Rich and the Earthquake

Rich was part of the gang from my days at University Park and a founding (and finding!) member of the Brotherhood of the Stake. Someday I'll write a prologue on Rich, because his personality was so distinctive.

On this eve of the 100th anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake, I had to write this remembrance down.

One night we ended up playing a game in the TV room on our floor and someone had put the movie San Francisco on. It's quite a good movie, but almost all of the story concerns Clark Gable trying to seduce Jeanette MacDonald with Spencer Tracy as his boyhood chum priest trying to stop any shenanigans. This is all prelude to the earthquake. The promotions during the commercial breaks showed scenes from the earthquake and that's what we were all itching for. At one break, Rich announced that he needed to go to the bathroom and shuffled down the hall at absolute minimal speed, as only he could. As soon as he was out of earshot, the movie returned and voila, the earthquake. I remember the earthquake scene as being pretty quick.
As soon as the next commercial break came on, we heard the telltale shuffling coming back down the hall towards us. We burst out laughing before he ever re-entered the room. We gleefully announced that Rich had missed the only part of the movie that he was interested in. He accused us of conspiring to trick him into leaving and missing the still pending earthquake. Only after the movie returned to the air and he looked at the images of rubble on the screen, did he start to believe us. And he went ballistic, cursing fate for yet again conspiring against him. And he was plenty mad at us for having such a good time at his expense.

By the next day, we were all friends again. After a night's sleep, even he could laugh at his own misfortune. The quick rebound was what made Rich so endearing.