Not really about sharks, or anvils either

Somewhere deep in the darkest recesses of my memory lies the scene from Batman where Adam West, dangling from a helicopter, gets attacked by an extremely phony shark and saves himself by asking Robin to hand him an aerosol can of Shark Repellent--and I know I didn't just dream that up because here it is on YouTube.

The scene raises a number of questions, starting with Why and moving on to Who's flying the helicopter while Robin fetches the Shark Repellent, but you've got to hand it to a guy who has so deeply internalized the Boy Scout Motto that he can Be Prepared to fight off a shark attack even while dangling from a helicopter. 

I wasn't a particularly good Girl Scout, but even I knew that you can't Be Prepared for everything all the time: you wouldn't take Shark Repellent on a trek through the desert any more than you'd take sunscreen while spelunking. There just isn't a tool belt big enough to deal with all possible problems, much less the impossible ones. I mean, you don't whip out a handy can of Anvil Repellent unless you live in a world where anvils routinely fall out of the sky.

But what if you do?

This week an anvil fell on my campus, and those of us who were close enough to see a beloved colleague's career go splat are suddenly asking ourselves a bunch of questions we've never had to ask before. For instance:

• Is this a one-time event or should we expect showers of anvils?
• How does one protect oneself from showers of anvils? Umbrellas would be useless, and no one's selling Falling Anvil Insurance.
• If an anvil could fall on that end of campus, what's to stop one from falling on my building or my department or my office?
• If I saw an anvil falling toward my office and had only 30 seconds to save what I could from the wreckage, what would I grab? What would I gladly leave behind?
• How does one prepare for the possibility of falling anvils? I'd start with a home computer so I don't have to be entirely dependent on my college laptop, plus an email account separate from my college account, plus copies of all my valuable files, but what else do I need in my toolbelt?

Even Batman couldn't fight off that shark on his own--he needed his trusty sidekick. If the local forecast calls for showers of anvils, I hope those of us who see it coming will band together to share whatever we've got in our toolbelts. Now is the time Be Prepared--to make sure those toolbelts are fully stocked up with useful things, because once the anvils start falling, it'll be too late.