What I used to think I was doing.

My work involved testing people. Taking individuals out of the known and in front of an audience seeing how they would cope with that. It was a simple thing. I was extraordinary and I'd insert myself into the ordinary. Behind a corner between point A and B for someone walking in a public place. I called them victims inside my head but more correctly they were participants in a small reality I fashioned.

It is intriguing to watch. Audiences would always form because there was dramatic tension displayed very simply and also because the range of human reaction when faced with the unknown is so vast and universal.

Some people held onto their injured pride after I had triggered some instinctive flinch or stagger or start. Others simply digested instinctively that the atmosphere was benign and laughed along with the onlookers at themselves and my framework.

I enjoyed being unrelenting with the proud. I'd use my audiences laughter as permission to define a common enemy "brittle insecurity"

I had fun with that.

Others would play, matching my aggression with their own and while I had a flyaway they might improvise with an umbrella or walking stick.
Occasionally someone would try and bring the entire proceedings to a halt so that they could refashion the situation with themselves as instating. This was rare and I believe instinctive in a rare sheltered type of authoritarian and it always gave me some cruel pleasure to deny them purchase by way of my extensive improvisational ability to never lose the momentum.

People, my audience, would celebrate the many ways we all have to overcome the unexpected.

I loved that part about my job. It never got old.