Too good.
Every year near the school I went to as a teenager, a local business would (in conjunction with the county council etc.) hold a day called "X"*. The aim of this day was to teach children about the dangers of strangers and doing what they asked you to. Kids would go around in groups of eight or nine through various different scenarios with the help of policemen, factory workers and (this is where I come in) sixth-form volunteers, all of whom had special badges identifying them to the kids as being legitimate. For some of the tasks you were required to leave your badge off, lead the kids into temptation, then be "arrested" by a friendly policeman.

I spent a fairly enjoyable week luring kids onto fake building sites and persuading them to take tic-tacs out of prescription medicine bottles, and you could really see the difference in attitudes as the day went on.

However. At no point did they check to see if I really was a sixth-former and not some wandering lunatic. They asked me to pretend to rob the tuck shop and to give credence to the act, they gave me a hatchet. A real one, if slightly blunt. I did wonder if they had read their own promotional material.

The performance side of this harks back to my time persuading the kids to take MASSIVE DRUGS. I was walking across the school playing fields about a month later when two ten year old girls with their big, hulking dads spotted me and shouted "LOOK DADDY! IT'S THE DRUG DEALER!" "HE TRIED TO SELL US DRUGS!" It seems I was rather too convincing, and only some very fast talking kept me with all my teeth in my head...


*Name not mentioned for perhaps obvious reasons.
( MatJ LOOK, Tue 23 Aug 2011, 21:06, Reply)