The "Imaginary Assault on MTHS" Story

It was an ordinary day. I was at school working in the print shop with my friend Mike Z. We have been working together for MT school district for about 40 years doing the in-house printing. During the summer months we can work at any time of the day since there are no classes in the shop. The only thing different today was when I arrived at about 7:30 AM there were 6 or 7 police cruisers parked at various spots in front of the main entrance. I really didn't think too much about it until I realized that one of the cruisers had the driver's door open and was parked on the grass near the front door. Now, that got my attention. Not much parking space, so I parked right in front by the curb. The front of the school has three sets of double doors so I headed to the one on the left where I could use my entrance card if it wasn't open. As soon as I swiped my card to open it, all three sets of doors opened and about 8 to 10 policemen charged through. Wow, now they really had my attention! Maybe I should hit the ground since all officers had either a pistol or semi-automatic rifle in their hand. I quickly went inside and saw the head of security, Dale M., in the lobby. Hurried over to him. He saw my concern and told me the MT Police Department was having a training exercise that would last for the entire morning. I would have to find an alternative route to the print shop, since they had part of the building roped off for the training. No problem. About two hours later Mike and I pushed a cart full of printed materials through the same doors to load into my car. "Here they come!" I yelled to Mike. Outside they came running from all directions to the front of the school. It's over 90 degrees and they are in full uniform with vests, running with their weapons drawn. One officer is near my car yelling directions into a speaker. "Take cover behind the blue car by the curb," he yelled. "Suspect is in the upstairs window." And, I'm standing by my blue car which is now surrounded by police. Should I take cover also, I wonder. Then he yells, "Suspect is no longer in the window, hit the front doors and proceed upstairs." These guys are really pumped up and sweating like crazy. Then, as they run from behind my car with their weapons pointed at the window, one of them drops his car keys behind my car. After a few more steps he realizes what he had done and stops, turns around, calls "time-out," runs back to retrieve them, and then continues into the school. My guess is that if it was a real incident there would be no "time-out" and the keys would still be in the street. I ask Dale when we returned into the school if they will be back tomorrow. He tells me they have three more days of training at different parts of the school. "How about I bring in a camera and take some photos for my blog?" I said to him. He looks me in the eye and says, "I don't think they would appreciate that." So folks, sorry, but there are no really neat photos of the imaginary assault on MTHS. It was really scary, but did make me feel safer. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.