One summer when I was in high school I got to attend Hoosier Boys' State. This program is sponsored by the American Legion, ostensibly to raise the civic conscience of our country's future leaders, but the reality is more akin to "Lord of the Flies." The blessed event was held at Indiana State (technically, a university) in Terra Haute. If you've ever been to Terra Haute, you may remember it for its tremendous aroma. The city has quite a few active meat rendering plants, thoughtfully positioned around its perimeter so that summer breezes fill the town with noxious smells produced by giant vats of rotten, fermenting animal carcasses. I've heard of pedestrians literally throwing up in the street, overpowered by the stench. But I digress...
Kids attending Boys' State are divided into "cities", each city occupying one floor of a dormitory. Over the course of a week, elections and party meetings are held, laws passed, a newspaper printed, and a lot of other genuinely enjoyable activities. The real fun, of course, was spontaneous.
One of my roommates here at Purdue also attended that year, and lived in the rowdiest "city" in the entire program on the top floor of one of the dorms. They had firehose battles in the halls, spraying one another at full power and literally creating a river running down the stairwells. One day they filled one of the elevators with as many people as they could muster, about 30 in all. Once everyone was packed in, laying on top of each other like sardines, someone with enough freedom of movement to reach the buttons pressed main floor. They had a harrowing ride down the entire height of the building, and bounced about 3 feet up and down on the cable when they got to the main floor, a sort of elevator bungee jump. The cable held, but that particular elevator was shut down for repairs the rest of the week.
Each floor also seemed to have one misfit who ended up being hounded mercilessly. Sometimes this was due to obnoxious personalities; some megalomaniacal kids arrived with campaign posters preprinted and delusions of granduer. One such person, distressed by a lack of support in his party's caucus, responded to hisses and boos by screaming "I AM AN ENTITY", which rather than garnering him any respect merely earned him the nickname The Entity and a lot of taunting. Other kids were just shy or awkward and fell naturally into the role of "goat". On our floor, one fellow was chased naked through the halls for an hour because he'd been caught not singing while peeing (a "city ordinance"), but that hardly compares to what happened on my roommate's floor. Some poor guy there was tormented continuously, with the climactic event being an elevator ride from hell. The Young Leaders on his floor stripped him, tied him to a chair, smeared him with syrup and oats, placed him in the elevator, and pressed every button. By this point in the week, active warfare had broken out between floors, and thus at every stop he was pelted with water balloons and various other substances as the doors opened. Finally he arrived at the lobby, and his screaming combined with his remarkable appearance quickly attracted the attention of the dozens of parents gathered there for Parents' Day. I think he left for home after that, and given the probable damage to his psyche is likely now a serial killer.
Floor counsellors were not immune to this bunch, either. Midway through the week they had developed a strange fecal obsession, and enjoyed taking group dumps in boxes and hurling the contents onto other floors. They arrived on a similar course of action one day when they noticed the sun roof of their counsellor's car was open a crack. They pried it open further, and a large group relieved themselves inside with great enthusiasm, including both numbers one and two, so to speak. It was a very hot week, and an Indiana summer can do magical things to effluvia trapped in a confined space. Their counsellor got a rare treat when he discovered the present they'd left him about four days later.
Convocations were also interesting events, and by the end of the week tended to resemble movie scenes of angry villagers rallying to destroy Frankenstein's monster. One of the speakers we were frequently assembled to hear was exceptionally pompous, giving speeches filled with facts and figures obviously intended to impress the audience but seldom managing to. Someone began whistling in the auditorium whenever he would recite one of his Amazing Facts, a long "wheeeeet-WHOOOOO" that would send the kids assembled into hysterical giggles. By the time of the final address, every single sentence he uttered was greeted with a unanimous chorus of whistles, and he final stomped off the stage in a rage. In another assembly, a kid fell sound asleep, and those around him left very quietly to avoid waking him, and left him there for who knows how long. My single greatest achievement of the week had been the squirt-gun assasination of the (Boys' State) Lieutenant Governor during a Senate meeting, although this wasn't quite as noteworthy as the group who adbucted the Governor and held him hostage on the roof of one of the dorms. It did, however, produce a chorus of "You're dead!" whenever he attempted to make speeches. There was also an impressive talent show at one night's assembly, in which a kid actually took bites out of apples as he juggled them.
My favorite event of the week, however, was the Police Demo. We got to pick various workshops and events to attend if we weren't involved in "political" meetings, and I wisely opted for this one. We were taken to a field at the edge of town, and given an impressive demonstration of firearms and explosives by the State Police, who obviously had their fingers right on the pulse of young Hoosier males. They shot a number of objects with powerful rifles, exploded long arrangements of "det cord", and in the grand finale, detonated a large cache of explosives in the trunk of a car. At least, we had thought it was the finale. We were invited to wander into the field and investigate the remains of the car. At this point, the troopers shot tear gas canisters at us so we'd gain the valuable experience of running through choking clouds of tear gas, which I must say is amazing stuff. I did have the presense of mind (or lack thereof, perhaps) to grab a nice fist-sized chunk of undetonated explosive from the trunk of the demolished car. I'm still not sure just where I left it though...