Rule Breakers

It wasn’t a lazy morning at the outdoor Olympic sized pool. We worked every muscle, even the ones in our mouth. The first hour was deep water abs, hamstrings, triceps and biceps – pure Hell hour. By the end of the second hour we had digressed to working another muscle, the one that allows the tongue to wag. A group of women ranging in age from 40-60 were talking about a girl’s weekend trip to NYC to take in some shows.

“We can use our student ID’s and get in for $30,” she said.

“What student ID’s?”

“The kids make them, it’s easy to get them-fake ones,” she said.

That’s when I said, “Wow.”

“You are so American,” she said.

“I would never think of that. I’m amazed.”

Seeing my surprise at the devilish yet simply brilliant idea another woman spoke up. Here’s what she said, “We- a group of people I worked with made fake ID’s and got all the way to the vehicle staging station during the first shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral.”

The hinge on my mouth couldn’t have dropped any further.

“What? Seriously? Wholly shit! You have a ballsy and beautiful mind. Did you put a real company name on the ID badge?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, we did our research. We found out who designed the rocket boosters and we even got in two days- because the launch didn’t happen the first day.
"Oh my God."
"We had official looking stamps and everything. One of the guys didn’t have a good photo so he cut out a picture of a guy in a tux from a magazine ad and used that for his badge.”

We were hysterical. I wanted to know if she still had the guts to pull something like that off.

“Did you go to the last launch?”

“Nah, we just watched it on TV. It would be too hard to do that today with the increased security post 911 and all.” Oh how I wanted her to nonchalantly say, "Sure, we used the old passes.”

I know I probably shouldn’t because I’m so American and all but I kind of admire their rule breaking ways.