Grace Hall is currently experiencing an active fire alarm. While sitting out here in the cold (on a rock), I remembered the following story about fire drills and conditioning your audience to expect certain things.

We had to hold ten fire drills a year when I was in elementary school. Concern that a bunch of six-year-olds wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of their first fire drills prompted the school principal to call each of the kindergarten class rooms to pre-announce the first two.

You can probably see where this is going: the third of ten planned fire drills was unannounced, so naturally, we all panicked.