The things I do for my job

Thanks to this job, I have gotten to do a lot of things most people never will. I have flown in the Red Barron Pizza biplane, interviewed Jesse Ventura and snapped photos of Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards. And, as of this week, I’ve had police officers shoot 50,000 volts of electricity through my body.
Granted, some of these opportunities are more appealing than others.
I never set out to be electroshocked. Very few people ever do. All I really wanted to do was pick up the police report.
But then I talked to police chief Dan Siebenaler, and he asked me if I wanted to sit in on the department's Taser training. Having heard that police officers who use Tasers have to get tased themselves, I jumped at the opportunity.
It seemed like a good plan, but all of a sudden I found myself with more than a dozen police officers between me and the only exit, and they were making way too many jokes about turning me into a Taser target. And it’s a little hard to argue with people who are wearing guns.
Sitting through the training didn't help. I saw videos of people getting hit by Tasers. I even saw a video of a bull getting taken down by an industrial strength Taser, and he didn't look happy when he got up. Perhaps most disturbing, I discovered television news anchors are way to eager to make puns using the word "shocking" when they're reporting stories about Taser use.
I found myself hoping everybody else would just forget about me if I sat quietly enough in the corner.
They didn't. They seemed so eager to zap me I started to wonder if something I'd written had somehow offended to Farmington police community.
Finally, after weighing my options for escape, I agreed that if they let me get some pictures of them getting Tased, I'd subject myself to the jolt. It didn't occur to me until later to be concerned that police refer to Tasers as "less lethal” force, not "no permanent damage" force or, "just a gentle tickle" force.
My biggest mistake, aside from agreeing to participate in the first place, might have been letting the police officers go first. These are guys who carry guns. They wear bulletproof vests and have steel-toed boots. In other words, despite the conversation I overheard about asparagus tartlets, they all seemed a whole lot tougher than me. Hit them with a Taser, though, and they yell and swear and fall on the floor just like anybody else. It didn't exactly inspire confidence.
Still, by that point I was pretty well stuck. It somehow seemed unwise to weasel out of a commitment made to guys who have the power to write traffic tickets.
Besides, I thought I might have one thing working in my favor. Apparently, Tasers are most effective when they are fired into major muscle masses. Since I don't actually have any large – or, let’s be honest, mid-sized -- muscles, I thought I might have finally found a situation where my aversion to lifting weights would work out to my benefit.
I hadn’t.
In case you're not familiar with how a Taser works, let me explain. The Taser fires two little harpoons into the target. It’s a little bit like whaling, but without the blubber or the scurvy or the Greenpeace activists. Wires conduct 50,000 volts of electricity to the harpoon tips, essentially causing the target to rethink every bad thing he has done to that point in his life, scream, then fall down.
I had enough time before I got shot to think about how I would react.
For a brief, misguided second thought I might be able to suffer through in stoic silence (not even close). I wondered if I would curse like Courtney Love, and I might have except I was never able to form a coherent enough thought to come up with a good swear word. Think about that for a second.
In the end, I mostly just tensed up, arched my back and stood on my toes. The only thing I remember saying is, "Aaaaaaaarrrrrgh!"
A full shot is five seconds. I asked for three, but the officer who fired the Taser claims he accidentally shut it off after two. I would have sworn it was more like 15. It was not pleasant.
I was a little twitchy for the next hour or so, but aside from the little red welt where one of the darts lodged in my back I seem to be pretty much back to normal. And I like to think the Farmington police gained a new respect for me.
I figure it’s either that, or they’re telling all their cop friends about the idiot reporter who volunteered to be electrocuted.
(Published 12/15-12/16)