[youthoftomorrow]

so, i work in the games department at a theme park. i'm usually at a game called "Battlezone." the concept of the game is fairly simple: you buy buckets of rubber balls and shoot them from pressurized air guns at fiberglass boats from the side of a caged pool (you can also pay to get in the boats).

anyway, six of us were working there today (which is more than usual, but it's a Saturday). we had just finished closing it for the night and were waiting for our manager to come down and escort us to the arcade (where the games department is centered; he needs to escort us because each of us has several hundred dollars inside our till bags). he was running late, so we were sitting around the Battlezone booth (which holds the ball bin and the register), talking. DJ, the "lead" employee at Battlezone, was getting really bored, so he decided to get on the booth's roof (which is out of character for him, being the responsible, trustworthy employee that he is). he started walking around on the roof's edge (which juts out over the counter a few feet). this is a highly unsafe thing to do seeing as it's basically a few pieces of sheet metal supported by a few old 2x4s and some screws. we could hear the wood creaking and see that the entire roof was sagging because of DJ. my coworker, Cody, turned to me and said something to the effect of "wouldn't it be hilarious if he fucking fell?" this proved rather prophetic. another coworker of mine, my friend Brad, walked under DJ and started smiling.

Brad is the quiet, introspective type, and it's taken a few months for him to get comfortable with joking around with us. that fact made his next action all the more hilarious to the rest of us (excluding DJ): Brad yanked on DJ's dangling leg as hard as he could. the part of roof that DJ was sitting on collapsed and he tumbled to the asphalt. he wasn't hurt but the section of roof he had been sitting on was hanging from the building by a only few nails. everyone (including DJ) started laughing. after a few minutes, we realized how much shit we could all get in if we didn't think of an alibi.

so, we propped the roof up as best we could with what we had available (a net we use to scoop balls out of the pool) and started debating our best course of action. at first we thought we could just turn the lights off and go to meet our manager further down the path. then, after we had signed out, someone would have to jump the fence and pull the net away, making it appear that it had happened after we had left. we nixed that idea because it just seemed too risky. we settled on lying. we told our manager (when he finally arrived) that some little punk had decided to attempt a running chin-up and had failed. we're fairly certain he believed us (both Steven and i are quite skilled at executing this type of thing). this was the only time i've ever heard him swear (he muttered "Shit," while examining the roof). we joked with him the entire way back to the arcade, making it seem like business as usual (because an uncomfortable silence would be a dead give-away).

on my drive home, i realized that it's entirely possible that there are cameras covering that part of the path and we could be in some major shit, but decided not to worry about it (because i won't be the one who gets fired).