That's Right, It Starts With An Earthquake

My husband is a history channel nut. He loves it. I like it. When we're eating dinner, usually hours after everyone else has downed theirs, I don't mind sitting with him and watching World War II documentaries, Vietnam Documentaries, and Younameit Documentaries. Honestly, I don't. History was, and still is, one of my favorite subjects. However, if you've watched the History Channel, you already know that it doesn't just focus on history. It tends to go on tangents that include what ifs and what nots like, oh, I don't know, SEVEN WAYS THE EARTH WILL COME TO ITS END.

Seriously, I hate doomsday programs. They always spook me out. I can remember being seven years old and hanging out in my granny's back yard with my older cousins. They loved spooking me out by telling me that God was going to end the world in the year 2000. That he was going to burn us all out, and that no one would survive. No one. Not even me or my mom and dad. Then they would chase me around the yard chanting: Burn! Burn! Burn! Yes, I was freaked out. I was so freaked out that when my school went to the planetarium for a field trip, I couldn't watch the ceiling show. It was about the big bang theory, something this little Catholic (at the time) girl was not educated on, something that my little pea-brain connected with, yes you guessed it, the end of the world. I freaked out so much that the teacher had to remove me from the room. Serious trauma.

Anyway, back to dinner and a movie. Let me provide a brief summary of this torturous affair.

Scene one: a solar boom, bloom, flower, flare? I don't remember. (scream! panic! run!) Solar flares happen all the time. The good news is that the nearest star letting out these solar farts is too far away to damage us. All but one, no, not our beloved Sol, but a star that is like a billion or so light years away. Apparently, if this guy lets one out, it will reach us, take out our protective atmospheric layers, and then radiate us to death. TO DEATH!

Scene two: A Black Hole: Well, Asimov and the rest of the Sci Fi gang have it all wrong. These things don't provide gates to some amazingly sophisticated universe, they just muck you up. The start sucking everything in. One scientist described it as conflicting gravitational forces. The earth is trying to hold on to you while the Black Hole is sucking you up. First your head goes, then your hands, your arms, your torso...you get the picture. He thinks that would be the coolest way to go. Uh Huh. Cool. Right.

Scene three: A volcanic eruption of cataclysmic sized proportion. Translation: A really big freakin volcano. Apparently, the volcanic ash produced by this here volcanic eruption would be large enough, and long enough to block out those warm, life bringing rays of the sun. Eventually, everything on earth would freeze. To Death. To Death. To Death. STOP. Somebody slap me!

Scene four: Machines will reach the point where their AI will reach the point that they will indeed become senient beings. And of course, machines, in their perfection, will take over the world. Ever watch terminator? The Matrix? I-ROBOT??? Nuff said.

I will stop now. For one, I can't remember enough on the others, World War III, the dying sun, who knows what else, because the panic I was experiencing at the time took over any rational brain processing I may have had at that time. Another reason is that I love you all, and wouldn't want to inflict any emotional pain on anyone I could call friend. No, I wouldn't do that.


Anyway, back to the future. So, here I was sitting in the living room, with the love of my life not one foot away from me, panicked, screaming silently, freaking out, shedding nervously, watching this program with feigned calm and serenity.

Pass the salt, please.