"When I was a schoolboy," the instructor began, "we were taught to crawl under our desks in the event of a nuclear attack. Of course, with all the lead in the paint back in those days, hiding under our desks was probably redundant." Brad Stillman waited a beat for his joke to land but it didn't. It never had. And yet, he somehow felt compelled to open the Earthquake Preparedness class with it again. It was his fourteenth time leading the class. It was the fourteenth time he had told his school desk/A-Bomb/lead paint joke. 0 for 14. Not even a chuckle. He felt like Slim Pickens, riding that nuke like a bronco-busting cowboy at the end of Dr. Strangelove. Bombed at the box office.
