• My dad was president of the United States. One day, he was summoned to the underground headquarters of a secret order of assassins that ran the government and superceded the president's power. The order was run by a charismatic man in a red gas mask.

My dad was not cooperating, so they assassinated him.

I was on the playground of Miramar Ranch when mom called to tell me. I was distraught and furious. For some reason, no one seemed to appreciate why my father dying was so upsetting and no one made overtures to console me. I screamed in their faces and later apologized.

• There was a Republican senator who was entertaining a small child by being completely drunk. All of a sudden, twenty-some ninjas appeared out of nowhere, brandishing plastic swords. The leader of the ninjas - I think it was Jon Lovitz - made some speech about how the senator had interfered in their plans for too long. The ninjas fell upon the senator in a flurry of flashing plastic and he was dead.

The ninjas then tried to lure an ex-classmate who had published a novel out of his room. He was smarter than the senator. He and I were somehow able to overpower all of the ninjas with our plastic sword fighting skills.

• I was participating in a scientific survey of the eating habits of alligators. We would cling to poles about fifteen feet from the water ("That's plenty hihgh, at least in Winter!") and watch them swim through a big tank.

We would occasionally drop into the water, where we would be attacked. Whenever this happened to me, I would see myself from third-person. It didn't hurt.

• Dennis [a friend] had taken up a casual hobby of genetic engineering. He accidentally bred a horrible virus that reduced him to a vomiting wreck. I was afraid of getting it.