Safety Patrol Leads to Big Things

This is a picture of Chris Sanchez and his family with President Obama (and one with Michelle). Chris was a friend of mine in elementary school (I still remember whacking on a pinata for the first time at one of his birthday parties), and now he's been working with the Secret Service for quite a few years (he worked with the Bush administration as well- I believe he guarded Cheney for awhile). My mom used to teach at our elementary school, and Chris was in her class.
Chris and I both used to be on the "safety patrol". This meant that after school we got to put on these little orange harness/belt type things that had badges on them, and we used to yell at kids to quit running or quit roughhousing in the halls and whatnot. Kids who were particularly troublesome got "written up" on a piece of paper, and then we'd turn that piece of paper over to the teachers at the end of the day (although I don't actually remember ever really writing anyone up, but ya know- I could have). Chris and I got the coveted bus loading area for our patrols, which we were supposed to take very seriously (we were told by the teacher managing the program that kids would undoubtedly get mowed down and killed by the buses if we weren't paying attention). We were both big kids, so maybe the teachers just thought some of the younger kids would actually listen to us when we yelled at them.
Now that I'm older, it occurs to me that it was a stroke of genius for the teachers to have kids policing the other kids back when we were in school. No one would take the job as seriously as kids who were given a position of minimal authority over their classmates, and the whole program freed the teachers up to do other stuff- like gossipping and drinking coffee.
Wait. Come to think of it, this isn't much different than the relationship between the prosecutors and management at my current job. ;-)
Anyway, as I've been writing this, it also occurs to me that it's kind of funny that Chris and I both ended up in careers in law enforcement (well, I'm a county prosecutor, and Chris is a secret service agent safeguarding the life of the most powerful man on the planet).
See, kids? Safety patrol can really change your life!