When my brother and I were children, my dad got attached to a very sensitive unit in the FBI. There was a very real chance that we could be kidnapped at some point, so we had training on duress phrases and words.

If my brother and I were taken, we would call our dad and tell them we are staying with our friend Henry (Duress phrase.) If he was able to communicate with us he would then ask if we did our homework already. If we replied yes then we are doing well and not harmed. If we replied no, that would mean one of us has been severely injured or killed and that would change the response on his end.

We also had a phone number that we would have to remember, and there was a duress phrase for that as well. It went to his work and we would only ever call that if mom or dad were captured and we weren't. Dad would wake me up in the middle of the night screaming and shaking us until we could give the number and phrase from memory.

It is crazy thinking about that now as an adult. It was like our biggest secret and I always wanted to ask my friends what their duress phrase was, because I thought everyone had them lol.