AN EMERGENCY HAS BEEN DETECTED IN THE BUILDING. EXIT IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT TAKE THE ELEVATOR.
Loud alarm dinging.
Flashing light (thus the cool split screen that happened in above picture).
We had some excitement today. When the alarm first started going off I couldn't even identify where the sound was coming from. It was Orwellian -- shocking to suddenly have a voice start talking from the walls. Once it sunk in we all started organizing ourselves to leave. It was bitter cold today, so since I didn't feel a great sense of urgency (wouldn't there be more? smoke? people screaming in the halls? isn't that what every knucklehead thinks?), I took the time to run into our bedroom and grab the kids' coats while we waited for The Sister (I was pounding on the bathroom door for her to come out, and the poor thing was trying to get dressed out of the shower). Not knowing how long we would be standing in the cold, I barked at the spawn to get their shoes on. Since I was grabbing coats I thought that I might as well grab my handbag. This was the wrong thing to do. It prompted The Boy to grab prized possessions. That prompted The Girl to grab her stuffed arctic fox.
I will say that at the first moment we could leave (The Sister fully clothed), we did... and we proceeded to walk down all twelve flights only to arrive at the bottom and be told that a crew had been working on a panel and accidentally set something off. It was nothing to worry about; we could take the elevators back up.
The alarm was still going off as we came back into the villa, but over it I could hear my mother-in-law: "Well, at least the rubber chicken was saved."
At that moment I realized that we had failed miserably. School has done so much over the years to teach them to grab nothing -- just go. And the grandparents were great examples of that -- they just went like they were supposed to. By seeing me grab coats, and then for good measure my handbag, my kids got into their minds to take their stuff. In a situation where seconds might count, stopping to get stuff -- even stopping long enough to consider getting stuff -- might make the difference.
So I absolutely FAILED at teaching a valuable lesson today. The irony is that for half a second once in a past life I had been a flight attendant. I had been trained about the importance of every second, etc. and so forth.
Today's drill was a vital -- it reminded me of the basics:
1. Leave immediately
2. Take nothing
3. Don't go back up/in unless you hear from somebody in charge EXACTLY what the situation is (don't just accept: "It's fine, go on back").
To note: The Grandpa did all of this right. He was a very good example.
For the four of us that failed, we did learn what matters to each of us (my kids' coats, being dressed, a stuffed animal, a rubber chicken...).
Aside from our drill, we briefly walked on the beach on our way to the hammocks, but because of a bitter wind mostly we just flitted between our villa, the activity room, and the indoor pool.
