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Joshua Foer

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Posted Monday, Aug. 14, 2000, at 9:30 PM ET

For the last five days, I have been a slave to the Democratic Party—albeit a willing one. I have been a pair of arms to lift heavy ultraviolet credential scanners, a set of fingers to collate maps of the Staples Center, legs to walk bottles of cold water to thirsty security guards, and hands to place notices under the windshield wipers of parked cars.

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If there's one part of my body that the Democratic National Convention Committee's Security Department hasn't made much use of yet, it's my brain. The closest I've come so far to investing any measure of thought in a project was on Saturday when I got to supervise two union workers putting up signs at the various metal detectors to let conventioneers know that large knifes, guns, and laser pens are forbidden inside the Staples Center. My big decision of the week was to put the signs on the outside of a metal fence as opposed to the inside so that they could be more easily read. A wise decision it seemed to me—although it was quickly shot down by a superior for reasons that I still haven't made much sense of. I am, to say the least, the low man on the totem pole, or to put things in convention terms, the American Samoa delegation of the Security Department.

However low my standing might be in the Security Department, I still have the one thing that sets me far above all the other volunteers and interns running around the Staples Center: a radio walkie-talkie with an earpiece and Secret Service-type cuff microphone. Though it's seldom used, the radio gives me an air of importance that seems to invite complicated questions from the press and other volunteers that I'm not capable of answering.

Despite assigning me the Security Department's grunt work, my supervisors have made a concerted effort to include me in some high-level meetings. Because I ask so many questions about their work, I think that I may have unconsciously deceived them into believing that I want to pursue a career in security. In truth, it isn't a line of work that interests me all that much. I decided to volunteer in the DNCC's Security Department only because I figured it was my best chance of meeting some VIPs. So far though, I have yet to meet one.

On Friday I sat in on the Tabletop Exercise, a four-hour-long meeting held in a dimly lit room on the same suite level as all of the network skyboxes. Everyone from the fire marshal to the convention's legal team to the head of External Affairs to various security experts was invited. And then there was me, the lone 17-year-old, sitting quietly in the corner, sort of wishing I could jump in with questions, and definitely wondering what the nearly 30 other people in the room would say if I did.

It was like the scene of the war room in Dr. Strangelove minus all of the weirdness. Standing at the front of the horseshoe arrangement of tables that I helped set up, the DNCC's hired gun in security, wearing two-thirds of a three-piece suit, put transparency after transparency on an overhead projector. Each one described an imagined scenario that the folks running the convention could potentially have to deal with. The group as a whole then discussed how each of the bodies it represents would handle the situation. The scenarios ranged from a heart attack on the floor to a fistfight amongst delegates to a guy in a yellow rain slicker and gas mask spraying an aerosol can in the men's room. At the end of the meeting, I nodded my approval to everyone present, checked my earpiece and my walkie-talkie, and strode out to save the Democratic Party.