Safety Lecture

Child 1 received a phone call the other night from a member of the Civil Air Patrol. He would, he announced, be out of town for a month and so would like Child to take on his CAP Safety Lecture for the month.

Now, Child does not suffer from excessive shyness. Nor does It demonstrate much in the way of social ineptitude or self consciousness. In fact, and this still stuns me, It once volunteered as a brand-new freshman to throw a basketball somewhere in the vicinity of a basket in front of the entire student body [note: even more amazing, it made the basket]. Child 1 is, I think it's safe to say, its father's child in this way. Kirk was gregarious, charming, funny, and endlessly delighted to speak in public [eta: he was also, of the two of us, the only one remotely talented at basketball]. Therefore Child 1 immediately snapped up this marvelous chance.

That's where things get fun though, because we jumped at once at the thought that this was a Safety Lecture and we have been (as mentioned earlier) slowly working our way through old MacGuyver episodes! Who, I ask, is better qualified than we to ghost write this lecture?

So!

First we all decided that obviously a lecture is boring and a multiple-guess, audience participation, scenario based learning opportunity is FAR better. Second we also decided we would plagiarize shamelessly from the television show. We chose an early episode because A. it had a plane crash in it and this is the Civil Air Patrol darn it and B. it had a rattlesnake in it and that's just cool.

We're still working on the full glory of the whole thing, but I'll give you a sneak-preview with two of the questions as written by Child 1 (with a certain amount of well-intentioned family interference) including the possible answers. Premise: one is in a small plane (crew of 4) which has unfortunately crashed due to pilot error (the pilot made the error of eating a large and fatsome fast food meal and expired with a heart attack).

Question: The first thing you do after the crash is:

A. Bury the pilot
B. Pat him down for small change and gum
C. Assess the condition of the rest of the crew
D. All of the above

Question: You wake in the night with the unfortunate knowledge that a rather large rattlesnake is cosying up in your nether-regions. Do you:

A. Shriek like a girl and whack in the general vicinity of the snake with your handy hatchet?
B. Use your ninja skills to reach down and remove the snake with one swift motion?
C. Have a friend use an alternate heat source to lure the snake away at which point you carefully grasp it behind the head and take it away to do something secret that will probably offend any nearby animal rights activists?

I don't know how the lecture will go, but we're enjoying ourselves tremendously.

UPDATE: The lecture takes place next week! I'm thinking of suggesting a question regarding the ethical implications of cannibalism simply so we can make gingerbread men from my favorite recipe.