To give you a sense of the kind of community in which I live, I'm going to tell you about one of the most exciting things to ever happen around in here in the past two years.

A house blew up last night.

It was due to a gas leak, and no one died, though one guy was inside the house and injured. The explosion could be heard in at least an eight mile radius, because I have an aunt who lives about eight miles away from ground zero who heard the explosion.

I don't know what this says about me, but I'm apparently the only one in the county who didn't hear the explosion, even though I live about three miles away from the house.

An exploding house brings the community together. The first indication I got was a telephone call from my Mom, who was working at the time, her office about a mile away from the explosion. She said she heard a nearby explosion, and then sirens, and wanted to know if my Dad and I heard it or knew what was going on. Neither of us had heard it, though. Right after that, one of my uncles called (living approximately four miles from the explosion), saying he heard the explosion and asking Dad if he knew what was going on. After that, Mom called again. Her bosses' sister was monitoring the police scanner, and heard that a house blew up from a gas leak, and she could even smell the gas at her house (she lives right beside the office where Mom works, so a mile away also).

I told Mom that if the bosses' sister smelled gas, that Mom should call her to tell her to put out any open flames, like candles, she might have in her house. Unwittingly, I scared Mom to death with that. Mom and I both have this trait that when we hear about or see something bad happening to someone else, it feels like it's happening to us too. So now Mom was afraid her office was going to blow up, and now surmised that the explosion probably already killed a lot of people- people we knew- and she got me all nervous. Mom, who has never had an automobile license in her life, asked that Dad go get her to bring her home immediately.

So I told Dad to go get Mom, and he wanted to call my uncle first to relay the new information. But now I was panicking, and I pleaded that he leave this instant to rescue Mom! I promised to call the uncle. So Dad hurried out, and I participated in the great telephone network that evolves in crises such as this.

When an event like this happens, an intricate web develops to pass on information as soon as someone hears an unconfirmed rumor. When one gets a call, one also gets the responsibility to call someone else to pass the information along, and to supplement that information in a prompt manner as more is learned. No one explicitly organizes it, but this organic information network is so efficient that it would cause every U.S. intelligence agency to be jealous. Thoughout the night, we'd get periodic calls from friends and relatives with new explosion information, which we'd pass on to the next person in line.

Being caught up on the telephone, I didn't notice how long it took for Dad and Mom to actually get home, a good thing I guess because it saved me a lot of worry. When Dad arrived at Mom's office, and they both realized that they weren't going to die, they decided to ride around looking for the explosion. They were unable to locate it before getting hungry and deciding to head home.

We watched the local television and radio stations for information, but they were useless. The local radio news team- who probably heard the explosion themselves if they were at the station at the time- was unable to get the story before the D.C. news teams who had a 90-mile disadvantage to overcome.

The D.C. Fox station reported on the explosion as the lead story. And this is where the community cheers, because the name of our small town appeared on the television. Stephens City. We hit the big time. The whole community basks in fame from the mention. (And no one died and one injured, that was good news.) Other than mention in the big city, Stephens City's only claims to fame are an exit sign along the interstate and Dinosaur Land.

But we're getting used to the fame now. Our little town was mentioned all over national news a couple of years ago, when someone bought a multi-million dollar lottery ticket at the local deli. The telephones were on fire when that happened, as we tried to figure out which of our neighbors was now insanely rich. As if one of us would get a cut just for living nearby. That bit of fame lasted more than the customary fifteen minutes, because the winner held on to the ticket for several weeks before finally revealing his identity and claiming the winnings (it was an out-of-town guy, bummer).

Of course, the day after such an event, all commerce grinds to a halt. Instead of performing work, everyone has to recount to everyone else the minute-by-minute flow of telephonic information, in detail, meticulously identifying sources and providing context in a way that would shame every television journalist competing for a scoop. Today, the whole town has been in a post-coital daze.

Oh what a day.