Trial Balloon: November 30, 2009 Archive

Party Crashers

Posted at 6:00 AM on November 30, 2009 by Dale Connelly (21 Comments)

The couple that managed to get into last week's state dinner at the White House without an invitation have a desperate hunger for attention and no shortage of nerve. That's a combination that will get you far in 2009.

Of course now they have lots of attention in the form of intense scrutiny from the Secret Service, CNN and the National Enquirer, just to name a three very different organizations that are most likely seeking every available personal detail about our gregarious pair.

Welcome to FAME, party crashers!

It's amazing the places you can go if you simply pretend that you belong and act like nothing's wrong. I suppose some people get a thrill from slipping through security. Well, I know they do. They're called burglars, and occasionally they go to jail for it.

My experience closest to the State Dinner Fiasco happened more than 20 years ago in San Francisco. My wife Nancy and I were at the end of a vacation and we wanted to finish by taking the boat out to Alcatraz. As our bad luck would have it, all the boats were full that day - we could only buy a ticket for tomorrow and tomorrow we would be on a plane.

I am a habitual rule follower, so I was ready, maybe even eager, to give up. Nancy, however, noticed the ticket takers on the gangway weren't looking closely at the passes as people went by. She saw an opening. Against all my obedient instincts, I agreed to buy tomorrow's tickets and we walked, boldly. towards today's boat.

We were admitted without a question.

Just as we headed down the ramp, there was a camera to take souvenir photos of the tourists. Here we are - one of us giddy with the delight of successfully running a harmless scam, and the other full of tension, anticipating an official hand on the shoulder, then a sack over the head and a brutal dragging into a deep, dark waterfront dungenon populated with bear-sized rats and cockroaches that can tear your skin off.

At the very least I feared we would be detained on the island - after all, it was once the nation's highest security prison and we were breaking IN.

Have you sweet talked, finagled or conned your way into a place where you knew you weren't supposed to be?

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