Another thread on this board was posted talking about someone who put a note referring to a bomb in his luggage. Amp made a comment about having fun shaking up authorities, and it made me wonder… What other sorts of things have people done, “just for the fun of it”… Following are two of my own examples.
When I was a teen, I lived in a town with not a lot to do, so we had to invent our own entertainment. Such late night pleasure romps included things like going to cemeteries and soaping fountains… Standard Wild Child stuff… But we had another game that we’d play from time to time. It was called “RUN!” Let me splain… No, there isn’t time… Let me sum up. On slow, boring nights with nothing much going on, and when everyone is just hanging out downtown, bored, wait for a cop to cruise by. He’s bored too, so he checks out the bunch of you… One person in the group will notice the cop, point at him, yell “COP! RUN!” And then everyone runs.
A fact about cops. When they see someone running, they WILL give chase. It’s like dogs and mailmen or something. They are also very persistent, and tend to call other cops to come help them chase you.
The winner(s) are the ones who do not get caught, or are last to get caught. A note about “RUN!”. Don’t have been doing anything illegal. You see, if they find out you’ve been, say, drinking, you really ARE in trouble. This means you lose. Even if you were the last one to get caught. The winner then becomes the next to last one to have been caught, but first one with sense enough not to have done anything for which cops would want to chase you.
When they do catch you and ask why you ran (Notice, at this point even they do not know why they were chasing you), you simply say “Felt like running.” Running is not illegal. Especially in Boston.
They WILL try to make you think they caught you doing something you shouldn’t have. They will tell you that your friends already confessed and they want you to make it easier on yourself. But really… You just felt like running.
Cops usually don’t like “RUN!”
Some years later I’d outgrown “RUN!” and I was feeling somewhat nostalgic about the good old days when a new opportunity presented itself to me.
I was living in Southern Illinois; George Sr. was the President and had hit the campaign trail looking for votes. As it happened, he was to speak at a community college a few minutes from where my wife was working. I had the day off, and decided that I’d drive my wife to work so I could go see the President speak.
Bush Sr. wasn’t slated to speak until around noon, and it was around 8:00 in the morning. I decided just to wait it out and try to get a good spot to watch. There were a lot of very official looking people around looking very busy. I approved of this as I didn’t think my tax dollars should go to pay people to take coffee breaks.
Eventually the official looking people made everyone who wasn’t official looking leave the area in front of the podium. We were made to stand in a line behind a row of metal detectors and wouldn’t be allowed to stand anywhere near the president’s podium for quite a while yet.
As often happens, those of us standing near one another in the line began to chat. The morning wore on, and more and more people began to arrive. Some of the newcomers decided that we’d been standing at the front of the line long enough and they were there to relieve us of our posts.
To us, this seemed like a better deal for them than for us, so we all linked our arms and stopped the newcomers from taking their rightful place at the head of the line. They were mad at us for not letting them do their jobs and told us so in no uncertain terms.
Now, as it turned out, one of the people I had been chatting with was a student at the community college where Bush Sr was coming to speak. Her mother was a reporter for the local newspaper, and had been given a press pass.
A press pass, at least this press pass will admit as many people as the person with the press pass says is with them. She told me that since I’d helped her to keep her spot at the front of the line, she’d get me in to the VIP area on her press pass.
Score! I might actually be able to see the big man!
When they finally started letting people into the fenced off area, they made people open their cameras to show that there was really film in them. I guess the Secret Service gets kickbacks from Kodak.
They also weren’t letting people bring in any signs. I thought that was kind of strange. I mean the signs said things like “VOTE BUSH” and after all I thought that was the whole point of the day. A rumor began to spread through the crowd that the reason was that at a previous stop, some people had brought in their BUSH sandwich boards, but when Bush started talking, they turned the sandwich boards inside out and they said CLINTON. Pretty sneaky!
And then I was in. Well… it was outside, but I was in the fenced in VIP area. The girl who’d let me in on her press pass started running. I decided this reminded me enough of “RUN!” that it might be fun, but it turned out she was only trying to get to the front before other people. Oh well, it still worked out.
So I’m standing right by the podium where Bush Sr. was about to speak. I felt like that was a pretty good way to start the day. A series of people, most of whom I don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure one of them was the Coach from that TV show… Coach? I think that’s what it’s called.
While all of this was going on, Secret Service guys started passing out BUSH signs. I guess there was a pretty limited chance that signs from the Secret Service would say CLINTON on the inside. I didn’t want one of the signs, so I just passed them back to people behind me.
About ten minutes later, other Secret Service guys started going through the crowd telling people to pull the wooden stick off the signs and pass them forward. Since I was at the front of the crowd, they passed them to me and I passed them to the Secret Service guys.
It should be noted that these sticks, though ostensibly to poke in the ground in front of your house and hold up the signs for the world (Or at least the neighborhood) to see, have approximately the same strength and weight as balsa wood. Remember those 99 cent little airplanes you could get at the drug store? It was thicker than the wings. Only not much.
I asked the Secret Service guy Why did we have to hand in the sticks? It would certainly make it harder to loft the signs into the sky for the world (Or at least the neighborhood) to see! His reply shocked me.
“It’s a potential weapon against the president, Sir.”
I looked at him, then looked at the balsa wood stick, then at the 6 to 8 feet separating me from where the President would soon be standing, and then back at him. What I said next was possibly not the smartest thing I could have said. But it was worth it for the story telling rights I earned from it.
“You’re kidding, right? I mean what am I going to do with this? Give him a vicious splinter? Besides which, there are sniper guys with carbine rifles on the roofs of at least three of the buildings around here.”
At this point I pointed at the roofs of some of the buildings where I’d spotted people a little while earlier. Did I forget to mention them? Sorry about that… They were there.
“They’d shoot me before I could hurt him. Anyway,” And here I got a little stupider. I admit this. It wasn’t smart. But it was fun. “If anyone really wanted to get to the president, those metal detectors wouldn’t stop plastique. And I bet the battery from a camcorder would be strong enough to detonate it.”
Here is a well known fact about Secret Service guys. I bring it up at this time just to illustrate a point. You’ll see what I mean. Secret Service Guys Take Their Job Very Seriously
Secret Service Guy did not look at all happy that I was there, but he wandered off to finish collecting his balsa splinter sticks. Just a few minutes later three Really Big™ helicopters landed about 200 yards from the podium. Out of the back of one of them came a limo. The limo drove up to a little walkway that led to the podium in front of me. Bush Sr. got out and out of nowhere yet another Secret Service Guy popped up right in front of me.
I’d been standing there, minding my own business since the Secret Service Guy went away with his kindling when this new Secret Service Guy leaned up close to my face and said “Keep your hands out of your pockets while the President is here.”
Better sense took control at this point and I decided to take his advice. The President gave his speech, and it was a pretty good one. Hell, I decided to vote for him. When he was done speaking, he walked around to the front of the podium and shook hands with all of us that were standing there as he made his way back to his limo. He even shook my hand.
I smetimes wonder just what the Secret Service file says about me from that day.