New rule: When you see the Pig on the move, it is going to be a good day:
And so it was a good day, even though I didn’t see an actual Piggly Wiggly. (The amount of sleep I had this weekend might have something to do with the former.) I think I could only drive to one or two strictly by memory any more. How many Piggly Wiggly stores remain? Pigapedia says there are more than 600 stores in 17 states, with a distribution center still in Alabama. There are apparently 103 here, many in small towns most people have never heard of. Some in small towns I’ve barely heard of.
I remember the last time I was in a Piggly Wiggly, mostly because the opportunity was so rare as to be memorable. Nothing else about the place was. The mascot is great, and the store has a place in history, but otherwise they just feel undersized — compared to most suburban America grocery store experiences.
There’s something we don’t think about a lot, I’d bet. In fact, that exact phrase has never been crawled by a Google spider before.
One day, somebody will be at a Piggly Wiggly with their parents or grandparents and Google something about the place and this post might show up.
(Hi kid, check out the cereal selection on aisle 4. Some of it was probably shipped on that truck above.)
Today in class the chief of the Public Safety department came to give the students a faux-press conference. He was even kind enough to put on his badge, which I don’t always notice him wearing.
Every year or so the Public Safety crew and local emergency teams run an on-campus emergency situation. When I asked the director to visit my class he simply recycled this scenario. It was great. He walked in and tells the students there’s been an explosion. They have four phone calls reporting a suspicious person. The campus is on lockdown. There are injuries. These and those people are responding. “Are there any questions?”
The students ask some questions and he answers them and then he thanks them for coming and promises them another briefing. He goes outside and the students and I talk about what just happened. What did we learn and what is still confusing? What questions did we like and not like?
He comes back in and there’s an update to this part of the story and that. More questions. He leaves again. I give them a little primer on this aspect of the process, some “Have you thought about that?” business. He comes back in and does another briefing and takes more questions.
This goes on through about four or five press conference sessions and the faux-news (because this is all hypothetical, no need to worry) is real grim. There’s a chlorine leak. They found another explosive. Dozens of people injured, a bunch of people killed. The shooter is dead. If this scenario had played out in reality with these details, you’d have something similar to the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting.
Some of the students start sweating. I’m not sure if that’s the details or the rapid fire nature of what the director is telling them. That’s a lot to write down and they’ll have to do a story on it. They did a fine job in the press conference, though. I started a list of questions that should have been asked and by the end they’d gotten answers to most of those. It was a good experience then, I hope, and it was because of the guy with the badge. He certainly made it a memorable day, and that makes it a good one.
He’s definitely going to be called upon again to do that in my classes in the future.
