I'm doing fine

Coal City Police Officer Jason Clark (left) and Wilmington Police Officer Jose Campos (right) work their way up a set of stairs during the rapid deployment school shooting drill at Booth Central School in Wilmington on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009.

At the beginning of last week I found myself in Wilmington for the Herald. I met up with a writer and members of the Wilmington and Illinois State Police at this abandoned school. The police were practicing how to handle a school shooting situation. As soon as I was assigned this shoot, I knew I'd have a great opportunity to get some solid stuff, and it did not disappoint. I hungout for a bit, watched then train, and joked around with some of the cops. The one threatened to throw me into a locker, to which I jokingly replied with, "Man, I thought these days were over with". Which of course was a lie in the sense that I never really had a bully at school. Every school on TV has at least one bully, I don't know if the Minooka school students were just lazy or TV lied to me, but I never had an experience with one.

Anyways, one of the state cops offered me the opportunity to take a gun and involve myself in a situation, (aka be a school shooter). It should be mentioned they were using real guns with different parts making them 'airsoft' guns. Either way, the thought of me either shooting cops or being shot at by cops intrigued me, and made me laugh. It would make for quite a story.

Unfortunately though, they were running late and I had to take off. Thus I missed my opportunity to unload some shots into America's finest. Another time perhaps?

This weekend I found myself in a surprisingly similar situation. The Joliet police and firefighters were supposed to have a paintball match at Challenge Park Extreme (which is now named CPX apparently) for charity. No firefighters showed up, so it was just police officers there. So for whatever reason I spent several days this week hanging out with the police. They grabbed an extra mask for me and I went out on the battleground with them. I put my big zoom lens on my camera and stood off in the distance so I didn't get shot, but still. it was fun. Every day is something different. Everyday is also Sunday when you are unemployed. Which is practically my situation. The Sun Times like to randomly send me my paychecks, so sometimes I go weeks without any payments. Not a good way to get by.