Is this the little boy at play?

About three weeks ago Joshua, his friend Ryan and I attended an Open House that I was surprised he wanted so much to attend. The city of Troy sponsors an Explorer group through their Police Department. It is for young people from ages 15-18 who want to experience facets of police work.

Now I know that Josh is a huge CSI (Vegas) fan and that he finds applied sciences exceedingly cool (Mythbusters), but the whole 'group joining' thing and the real police work the group does was a very pleasant surprise.

So far they have seen a K9 demo that was impressive (I was there for that one) and had a class in Tactical Defense that left him sore and happy. I'm missing something else they did but I'm positive that his response to the evening was "It was cool, mom!". (Does it hurt that there are two cute girls in the group too?)

In the coming weeks they will apply Strategic Tactics on a Lazer Tag field, learn and be certified in CPR (a re-do for J), and work his first official function with the Explorers and mentoring officers, a charity hockey game.

Crime scene investigation, defensive weapons and firing range experience, SWAT classes, ride-alongs, search and rescue (which includes rapelling off a 3 story training tower) and lots more are in store for them, Ryan also joined, and they're really excited about it all.

He'll have "Class A" and "Class B" uniforms (provided by the group, which is completely self-supporting - how cool is that?!) though he has to buy his own black boots. Can you hear him complaining? Me neither!!

So, without further ado, I give you my "rookie", Joshua, in his class B shirt, lookin' coooool, as always.