Zits & Wrinkles

meaghano:

in high school, when my friend Will and I spent all day at a police academy somewhere just outside of Tallahassee, helping train SWAT team people (members? officers?) in hostage negotiation. We were chosen by our drama teacher, who got the call because the law enforcement people were looking for theater kids to act out all of the different scenarios. This, in retrospect, is insane.

We actually spent all day improvising scenes that were handed to us on a worksheet at the beginning of the day, things like, paraplegic partner has just disclosed he has contracted AIDs, has taken hostage of neighbor in trailer. We got to switch off being hostage-taker and hostage, and fake yelling at each other in a wiretapped truck while the police officers tried to calm us down, and we mostly tried not to laugh. It was exhausting, but we did get free pizza and a Certificate of Participation.

This sounds like the most fun ever, and also like something that I would like to do more than one day a week.