Sub 4.2 earthquakes feel like a truck rumbling by your house (if you have an old house/apartment). I used to live on a busy street in SF and whenever there was an earthquake it was always ... was that a large truck or an earthquake. Only when it keep rattling did it really differentiate.
I experienced my first and only earthquake (5.8 magnitude) while visiting the holocaust museum in Washington DC. It was very out of the ordinary for the region and so as strange as it sounds, myself, my family and some other people present all thought the shaking was a part of the exhibit and simply carried on.... only for a security guard to come running in several minutes later to kick us out of the building.
I think earthquakes can by easy to miss sometimes for those unused to them because they feel so mundane. Like everyone's experienced a certain degree of shaking before, heck the turbulence in a plane isn't much different. This obviously changes at higher magnitudes but really changed my perspective.
It probably sounds weird, but I wish to experience a (light) earthquake sometime. The idea of the ground itself shaking seems absolutely alien to me.