The comedian Rich Hall (remember sniglets?) coined the term ignosecond to describe that instant, as the car door you just locked and pushed is closing, when you realize that your keys are still in your car. I’ve stolen his idea and changed it a bit.  While ignoseconds are the moments when you realize you've done something stupid but are powerless to change it, ignomoments are the moments when you think something stupid, something highly irrational that is the best your brain can do. Some ignomoments last longer than others.  Some even a lifetime.

I am deeply fascinated by what I call “earthquake ignomoments.” Earthquake ignomoments usually span a few seconds, the few seconds after an earthquake has started, but before your brain has correctly concluded that you are, in fact, experiencing an earthquake. During this span of time, your brain will conjure up what it believes is the most rational explanation for why the earth is moving. These explanations are usually anything but rational.

During my first earthquake, I was lying in bed half-asleep next to my husband wondering why he was bouncing his leg (and thus the whole bed). Jimmy is a constant leg-bouncer when sitting.  Only after I whined to him to stop shaking the bed did I realize that it was actually an earthquake. Well, I didn't realize, so much as I was told, "It's an earthquake, Beavis!" "Is it?" I asked and then it was over. A few blocks away, my friend Lina was wondering what her husband could possibly be doing in the bathroom that would shake the whole damn apartment.  Brandon has some notorious toileting habits, so this is not as crazy a theory as you might think. The next day at work, I came to fully understand that spouses get a lot of grief during earthquake ignomoments. My boss, too, had lashed out at her husband, sitting next to her at a desk, for shaking the earth.

Other people, in general, often play a role in earthquake ignomoment thinking.  My last and biggest earthquake occurred late one night when I was still at work.  The earthquake was, as I recall, only a 4.4, but very close to my office. The earthquake ignomoment was epic.  The motion and the noise started simultaneously: big, rollicking waves of motion and the intense squeaking of an entire floor heaving up and down. My brain got busy. I wondered why the room full of engineers next door were all jumping. Together. At work. Jumping up and down.  A bunch of folks decided to jump up and down.  This, for a few moments, was the best my brain could do.

Five to ten seconds later I came to my senses and dove under the conference room table. A manager ran in and screamed, "Where's my laptop?!" (He clearly had bigger problems than earthquake ignomoments if his top priority was a laptop.)  He grabbed his laptop and shot down the stairs.  We were on the fourth floor of a building designed to endure earthquakes, in other words, a building designed to shake like hell but not fall apart.  Shake like hell it did.  I followed him down the stairs and kept my mouth shut.  Yep, that was an earthquake, alright. Knew it all along.

Many moments of clear focus followed my last earthquake ignomoment: Are my kids safe? Was this one big, and far away, or small, and near? Why is the radio station playing "Stairway to Heaven"? I drove home to find my husband and children giggling about their own scramble to the couch. Dude, the couch? Whatever. Next time take my kids to the bathroom.  The one where you built the Armageddon-proof shower with the steel re-inforced bracing and the concrete with re-bar? Yeah, that one. (This is an example of the igno-action, a topic for another time.)

I guess you could say I'm fortunate not to have lived in "earthquake country" long enough to have gotten past the stage of having those ignomoments.  Eventually, I suppose people just shrug it off within less than a second. Earthquake? Check. But I kind of miss the cognitive challenge.  What the fucking hell is going on?  That's one of the most fascinating questions I've ever asked myself.

If you've ever read anything about cognitive-behavioral therapy, you will understand when I say it is essentially the idea of ignomoments extended into the realm of mental health. You can walk around on this Earth for years clinging to the most irrational ideas, especially ideas about yourself. Think you're a loser?  Why bother to look for the evidence when you know it as a fundamental truth?  Think life is going to be awful forever? Wow, there's real doozy.  Has anything in your life (and in our modern world) ever stayed the same for long? Cognitive-behavioral therapy throws those questions in your face and forces you to look for the rational answer, not the old standby, not the first stupid idea that popped into your head. And that's why I get so much out of it.

What the fucking hell is going on? I don't think I'll ever get tired of that question.