One of the steps required to marticulate toward the electrical engineering degree at Stanford University is grinding out electrical design labs. It’s basically 3 and a half hours every week designing and building circuit board contraptions with chips and timers and lights and making it all come alive and operate properly. It’s where those equations in our textbooks met live action. In each lab we are paired with a lab partner, mine happened to be my riding podna from Ohio….
Bruhs gotta stick together if we go make it out of here man.
Word.
So if we take this lab together, if you slip, I can help pick you up and if I slip, you can help pick me up.
Word…that sounds like a plan to me.
And so our social bond transcended to the educational realm. You can’t be lab partners with ALL your friends, cuz some of them will sink you down to that same F that they’re going to get because they’re not working hard or just plain stupid. Fortunately me and my lab partner were equally confused, so we made a good team.
One particular afternoon, and I remember it so well, because earlier that week, one of my dorm mates had gotten hold to some World Series tickets (A’s vs Dodgers) and he offered me a free ticket to join him. Of course I was DYING to go to a World Series game..fo free??!! Shiiii…but, if I went, I would have missed my lab and gotten a zero and stuck my lab partner out, so I passed on the free ticket and went to lab that day in an aggravated mood. So we’re sitting at the table with our circuit board between us and both me and my lab partner had snapped back and forth at each other in the first hour or so of the lab.
Man..I don’t know how this sh’t is supposed to work.
Me either. I thought you said you had already worked through all of the lab problems?
I drew em up..but I still don’t understand how this is supposed to work.
Oh great! I would have a dumb az for my lab partner!
Aww n’ga, you ain’t done sh’t to help!!
We both retreated to our lab books, heads down with furrowed brows trying to figure out flip-flop registers, when the table started shaking. I looked over at my lab partner with an agitated look of disgust, Man..at least stop shaking the d’mn table! That ain’t’ ME shaking the table!! I thought it was you… Before he could finish his sentence, the shaking got more intense, enough so that we realized it wasn’t just the table shaking, but the whole room. Our lab monitor was some young engineering doctoral candidate from Indiana who obviously didn’t know sh’t about earthquakes. Because as soon as the whole room realized something was REALLY going wrong, he yelled out to the entire class..
Okay!! It’s an earthquake!! Everybody to the center of the room!!
Right after he said this, the entire class got confused and started looking around at each other, ‘What? To the center of the room? That’s not what you’re supposed to do in an earthquake??!!’ When we all turned our questions back to the lab monitor, we were dismayed to see that he had already ran out of the building and left us. It kinda crossed my mind that he told us to go to the center of the room to make sure he had room to get out, but in retrospect I think he was already somewhat soft and he just panicked. When we all made our way outside of the Engineering Research Laboratory, there were a lot of students, faculty and staff congregated outside on the streets. The tremors were still shaking enough that I felt I was on a boat and I was intently staring at the ground waiting to see if it was about to crack open and alternatively glancing up at the sky waiting to see the 2nd coming of Jesus.
You might be laughing, but if you’ve ever been in one of those natural events like an earthquake then you know it will trigger your REAL feelings of the hereafter. That particular earthquake was in Loma Prieta, California in 1989 and the whole Bay Area felt it’s effects. Freeways collapsed, houses and building were destroyed, and it was a chaotic time for a lot of people in the wrong place at the wrong time. The worst part was that after it happened, all of the phone lines went down, so I wasn’t able to call my family back home in Houston and let them know that I was okay.
We had a 6-bedroom apartment or suite as they were called, and each of us had our own room. But later that evening, after the initial earthquake, there were aftershocks, which felt like smaller tremors that always had the potential to trigger an even larger earthquake. So needless to say, we were all on edge a bit as we watched the news reports of freeways collapsing and cars falling off bridges and other graphic depictions of death and destruction. There was a suite full of women that lived next door to us and later on that night, they all came over to our place and we all slept on the floor in our living room. Somehow there was a strength gained in numbers that allowed us to joke about our predicament, but through all the laughs, we had all faced a moment of clarity. Life becomes a lot sweeter when you realize just how close you came to losing it.
Back on the Southside, my mother and father were in their bed asleep, when they got a phone call late into the night from my grandmother in Arkansas, Big Mama. She had been watching the news and she saw the scenes of havoc and melee caused by the earthquake and she knew that one of her grandsons was going to school in the same vicinity… (my mom picked up the phone)
Hello?
Faye?
Hey mama.
You sleep?
Yes ma’am..how come you’re not?
Well, I was watching the news and I saw that earthquake out there in California. Ain’t D somewhere nearby?
Yes ma’am..Stanford is close to San Francisco.
Have ya’ll heard from him? Is he alright?
All the phone lines are down right now..we haven’t been able to get in touch with him yet.
Well, have you called the police or the hospital out there?
(sighing) Mama..why are you up worrying?
I just couldn’t sleep because I was worried about our son.
Don’t you know the God of Israel never sleeps and never slumbers (Psalms 121:4)?
(pausing) Well…yes.
That means you don’t have to worry about it, it’s in His hands. Go back to sleep, you staying up worrying ain’t go help nothing. I already prayed on it and I left it with Him, I’m going back to bed.
Some people listen incredulously when I tell them that story, because they have a hard time imagining how they would respond if one of their children was in a similar situation. The day after Christmas, when the news of the large earthquake (9.0 on the Richter scae) out in the Indian Ocean triggered a huge tsunami, I couldn’t help but think back to my experience of being in an earthquake back when I was in college. The Loma Prieta was a lot smaller in magnitude (7.1), but whenever the earth is moving and you have no idea if and when it’s going to stop, it’ll make your heart skip a bit or two. I really didn’t know anything about tsunamis, so I did a little research on it.
The word tsunami has a Japanese origin, with the ‘tsu’ meaning harbor and the ‘nami’ meaning wave. When submarine (underwater) earthquakes happen, the ocean floor abruptly moves and with such force, that instantaneously, the surface of the water takes on the same unleveled pattern of the ocean floor thousands of feet below. When this much water moves that quickly, it triggers a tsunami wave. It’s kinda like throwing a pebble in the middle of a still body of water. There’s rings of energy that emulate out in concentric circles away from the point of origin, or in this case, the epicenter of the earthquake. If you were flying over the ocean looking down, you would probably never even notice the tsunami wave, because it’s not as obvious to the naked eye. But as the wave propagates toward shore at speeds up to 500 mph, the crest of the wave starts to grow taller as it gets to more shallow water. So by the time it comes ashore, it’s a huge wall of water crashing into land and it’s definitely a force to be reckoned with.
This past week we have all been faced with pictures of death and destruction by this tsunami and so often the question comes up, ‘Why would God let such a horrible thing happen to so many innocent people?’ It’s easy to praise God and have faith in Him when you feel that He has looked upon you and yours favorably. But for those who feel that God has turned His back on them and allowed pain and anguish to enter their lives..well, it’s a lot more difficult to tell those folks that God is very much alive and that He loves them. Because they feel neglected or cursed and a lot of them grow bitter and resentful because they feel that God hasn’t done ANYTHING to help them. Many people start walking around with a chip on their shoulder, ready to fly off the handle and go agg at anybody who ‘comes at them wrong’. They’re like a wounded animal, hurt and extremely dangerous.
I wish I knew the words to say to these people who have lost their hope. Well, I know the words to say, but so often their pain is so deep, that they’re not ready to hear Bible Scriptures of reassurance. God’s ways are not our ways and sometimes He allows seemingly bad things to happen to good people. We can’t explain it, because most of the things that’s going on in this world are on a deeper level than we think it is. Time is marching on, the prophecy of the return of the King is steadily being fulfilled. A lot of people get dealt a difficult hand in life and they want to quit. Kinda like in dominoes..
Say mane..we gotta reshuffle this hand, I got all doubles.
So? You get what you GET n’ga!! Deal with it!
It takes a very strong and mature person to realize that adversity and pain are a part of life. Soldiers soldier up and keep marching on on that battlefield. Of course, sometimes we might have to make a pit stop and get down on our knees and pray for the strength to conquer that mountain of pain. Or maybe we might need to take some time off so that we can have a nervous breakdown and then rejoin the battlefield once we get tired of being certified crazy. That’s a joke of course..at least kinda, but ya’ll know what I’m talking about.
My prayers go out to all those who have been affected by this latest tragedy that has hit planet earth. As the death toll continues to rise we still have to be mindful that this is far from the greatest natural disaster that caused the most death. Back in July 1201 there was an earthquake that hit the Eastern Mediterranean that caused over 1.1 million deaths, mostly in Egypt and Syria. So no matter what it is you’re grieving about, always remember that it could be worse and no matter what storm it is that is going through your life, you’re still HERE baby. Some may argue against it, but I’ll go all night with you on this one, it’s still a blessing to be amongst the land of the living.
