Yes, My Dad Is Completely Perfectly OK

Friday, I received the following email from my hilariously indestructible dad down in Costa Rica:

i m fine but wonder if they follow me iwas about 10 miles from the
epi i needed to straighen my pics and dust the
shelves any way about the same as the san fran one when thye
bridge fell i was i0 miles from center when i phoned
home in minutes after your mother spent 5 minutes telling me
about the quake in calif love dad

What, you aren't a fluent Skeeter-speaker? His emails read sort of like e.e. cummings poems, crossed with text messages from a preteen girl.

The message is that he got through the Costa Rican earthquake without a scratch. This was his second major earthquake - he was also in the 1989 San Francisco quake. He managed to find a payphone and call my mom, who gave him a breathless did-you-know report about...a quake in San Francisco. She apparently completely forgot that my dad was there on a business trip. (Which is still slightly better than all the times she addressed me by the cat's name.)

So, what have we learned? 1. Nothing kills my dad, and, 2. Earthquakes follow him around like stray kittens or disgruntled ex-girlfriends.