Sudden Loss of Gravity Drill

Picture found on the internetYesterday I was privileged to meet my blog friend Jayne and her son Sam, in real life. Jayne and I went for lunch together (I'm in her town for meetings) and then we went to pick up Sam from school. I wanted to meet him, because if you read Jayne's blog, Sam is one of your celebrities. You have to understand that I tend to really, really enjoy unusual, bright people especially if they say what they think without malice. And Sam is unusual and says what he thinks. He has autism, and in my opinion he's quite brilliant.

So on our way back to drop me off at my hotel after picking Sam up from school, he was talking about the history of trains, and the Wizard of Oz movie--he knows all the actors's names and trivia about them--and he mentioned the tornado. And then somehow we got on the topic of tornado drills at school, and then I mentioned that I used to do earthquake drills at school with my students.

"Sudden loss of gravity drill," Sam said.

I was beginning to launch into blabbering about the earthquakes when Sam's comment sank in. And then I started laughing. He'd just popped out with it, not from any other source that I know of. How utterly creative, to suggest running a drill to prepare for sudden loss of gravity!

I sometimes wondered, growing up, what it would be like for us all to fly off this planet if it suddenly stopped spinning. I wondered why everyone didn't fly off the planet when Joshua prayed for the sun to stand still; after all, the sun standing still meant that the planet had to stop for a while, right? And what about when Hezekiah prayed and the sundial's shadow actually went backwards? The earth must have ground to a screeching halt in these old testament stories, I theorized. But somehow everyone stayed stuck to the ground.

The more I thought of doing a Sudden Loss of Gravity Drill, the more I chuckled over it. "That's the best phrase of my day," I told Jayne as she dropped me off.

When I told Husband about it on the phone, of course, he fell to his usual punning: "Yeah, we need to practice more Loss of Gravity. We should all loosen up and quit taking ourselves so seriously."

And that made me laugh some more.

From Dictionary.com, here are a couple definitions of gravity:
1. the force of attraction by which terrestrial bodies tend to fall toward the center of the earth.
2. serious or dignified behavior; dignity; solemnity

I need to have a talk with Risk and Safety Management at our university and institute a few Sudden Loss of Gravity drills. Just set aside some time to practice telling jokes and being silly and grinning awhile, so we don't get rusty before we really need it in a pinch. We'd all be a lot healthier and happier, I'd wager.

Thanks, Sam ... and Jayne!