rattling shutters

The office window shutters are rattling.

It’s one of those occurrences jarring enough that everyone is expected to partake in a brief rounding discussion about it. Or else you run the risk of becoming pegged as the anti-social one with conversational issues (ahem).

Someone starts it off by loudly asking a silly question with an obvious answer, like “Are the shutters rattling?” Someone else proceeds to suggest a likely cause for the disturbance, “Maybe there’s a storm outside.” Another takes the opportunity to leave her cubicle and walk over to peer out of the window, “Not raining yet; it’s just strong wind.”

At this point, if the person who first asked the silly question was really demonstrating an underlying attention-seeking streak, they might gleefully extend the discussion by joining the other at the window and offering their evaluative input on the condition of the weather. Or else, everyone shuffles their attention back to work from the 2-minute respite offered by rattling window shutters.

And I wonder... had it not been “just strong wind”... had it been something completely crazy (yet not implausible as the world has painfully found out) like our building being ablaze and on the verge of collapse, what would we have done instead? Here on one of the top floors of this building, which one(s) of us might scream and/or faint? Who would try to make a telephone call to a loved one? Who keeps a calm head, directs everyone else to the stairs? Who'd just jump?

What would I have done?