My cousin Tommy, 15 or 16 years old, recently went on a field trip with classmates also enrolled in a law class at his high school.

They were going to prison. If it had been announced, Tommy had been daydreaming, but perhaps the students were instructed not to wear shorts or skirts. As my uncle put it when he told the story, "Yah don't want the inmates to see Lenny and the twins and get all excited."

Regardless, Tommy didn't get the memo and showed up at the prison wearing shorts. He was told by prison personnel that he would not be allowed to go in.

"You'll have to go and sit in the bus."

Tommy obliged. He exited the building and walked through the parking lot over to the bus.


After knocking on the door, the bus driver opened it and Tommy began to step inside, at the same time explaining, "I have to wait on the bus cause I'm wearing shorts. They won't let you inside wearing shorts."

"Oh no! I can't be alone on the bus with one student. I'm not allowed."

Tommy moved no further. Instead, he headed back toward the prison. After being buzzed back into the building by a woman enclosed in bulletproof glass, he took a seat.

As he sat there....waiting....a couple of repairmen came into the room to change light bulbs. propped up on ladders, they went about their business. Until something outside caught their attention. Hurriedly, theg climbed down, folded their ladders and rushed from the room.

Naturally curious, Tommy stood up and walked over to the window. His eyes widened as he discovered what had driven the men from the room in such a hurry. There was a man running toward him carrying a handgun.

The man reached the window and demanded to be let in. The woman behind the glass responded, "I cannot let you in unless you check the gun."

"I'm not going to check the gun. Let me in the fucking building! You better let me in."

"I'm not letting you in with a gun!" she said as she slid a manila envelope under the glass and outside.

Reluctantly, he began to put the gun into the envelope. Before passing it back to the other side of the glass, a prison employee let herself into the building using her ID card. In an instant the man took the gun back out of the envelope and forced himself into the building behind her, no more than 15 feet from Tommy. As the woman wheeled around and saw Tommy standing in the room, frozen and wide-eyed, she screamed, "Ruuuuuuun! Ruuuuuuuuun!"

And run he did. Out the door and through the parking lot back to the bus.

Apparently, the gunman had recently been fired, his wife was leaving him, and the bank had foreclosed on his house. He had come to kill the warden.