After living in Italy, I’ve always wondered how far I could take the game of ‘act like you know what you’re doing.’

I use Italy as an example because in that country, no matter where you were or what you were doing, anything is permissible as long as you look like you should be doing it. Walking into a secure area at a train station? Hold your shoulders high and glare at anyone who gives you more than a glance. Trying to scam your way into a museum? Walk right in and don’t let anyone stop you. The bureaucracy in Italy is so thick and so convoluted that the left hand not only doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, it doesn’t even know the other hand exists.

So I’ve always wondered how far I could take that in my own country. So today, we played that game at that memorial to President William McKinley.

The memorial was a large, open-air, colonnaded structure in the classical revival style. One wing was the museum portion, the opposite wing a public library named for the former President. Since it was Columbus Day, the museum was locked. We figured we’d try to find someone in the library to help us out.

The front-desk worker, a bearded man in his early 40s, gave us nothing but blank stares when we gave him the standard lines of ‘We’re from an organization of which McKinley was a member,’ and ‘we’re on a cross-country trip on business.’ Both of these statements have worked before, with varying degrees of success, at Rowan Oak, home of William Faulkner, and in various university administration buildings. Neither worked today, so we decided to pull out the big guns.

‘We’re from a magazine in Chicago,’ we offered, ‘and we’re featuring this museum.’ Bingo.

Not only were we given access, but said mid-level bureaucrat later tracked down the museum’s director and explained our situation to him. We were granted full, unchaperoned access to the entire museum - as well as photo rights. And we did all of this while I was wearing a grey t-shirt with ‘ARMY’ written across the front, jeans and flp-flops. But I was holding a camera, so I suppose I looked the part of the professional photographer. Or something like that.

Kids, try this at home. Say you’re with the press; it works every time.

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A Footnote on the Proven Inaccuracies of Wikipedia.As a side note, I’m not sure I trust Wikipedia as much anymore. According to the entry on McKinley, who was shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901, ‘The newly-developed X-ray machine was displayed at the fair, but it was thought of as a technological novelty, not a serious piece of medical equipment; consequently, no one thought to use it on McKinley to search for the bullet, a procedure that might have saved his life.’

That was interesting, I thought, but farfetched. While browsing the museum, however, I found a Chicago Tribune front page from September 14, 1901, the day McKinley died, that claimed ‘X-Ray Apparatus Ready.’

I’m no logician, but I’m going with the Tribune report. Sorry, Wikipedia.