You Wouldn't Get It, It's a David Thing

Sir, I left something in your Beamer

Okay, so this week, once again, I'm on call. I get to do this at least once a month for a week. Well, up until Thursday, the flight schedule was fairly slow - hardly any flights coming in. And then Friday arrives along with a plethora of flights going in and out of our DV Ramp. No worries, I've done this a hundred times. Well, my first two flights of the weekend are in the middle of the night Friday night/Saturday morning. Two Generals flying in. Luckily, they're what we call No DV Greets which means that they don't want any fancy broo-ha-ha special attention when they arrive, especially when it's the middle of the night. It's these types of guys that I really respect.

Anyway, so the second DV who comes in one hour after the first guy. When he flew out the day prior, he'd left is Government Vehicle (a SWEET Dark Blue BMW with every luxury feature you can think of) outside of our lounge. As is the normal practice, after he flew off, I got into the car and without messing it up as much as possible, I drove it to the parking lot behind the DV lounge (for force protection purposes). Well, when he was flying back in, I was prepared to move the vehicle back to the DV Lounge "parking area" so that he could step off the plane and get into his nicely heated car and drive away. Nice person, I am, right? And by the way, it was snowing that evening, so there was at least two inches of snow and ice that I had to scrape off of the windows.

I grab my ice scraper from my car, turn on his BMW, start warming it up, blast the heater and defroster, and get to work on clearing all the windows. As soon as all that was done, I drive the BMW to the flightline to await it's owner's arrival. And by the way, I love driving this car. It is such a sweet ride. Anyway, I park the car in front of the lounge, get out, make sure I swept the snow out from the driver's side (from my shoes), make sure the car is off, make sure the windows are clear, and place the keys where our DV left it. I'm fairly proud of myself and joke that I'm his snow fairy (I appear whenever he's away and make sure his windows are cleared of snow so that he doesn't have to worry about it).

Anyway, I leave the car as is, go into the Transient Alert Building to keep warm. A few minutes later, our DV arrives on his plane, he gets out and goes to his car. He talks for a while with some of his staff. It's then that I start packing up my bag. And then, I realize that I can't find my car/house/office keys. They're not in my jacket, they're not in my backpack. Oh...crap...did I leave them in the BMW? No, I wouldn't have been that stoopid. It's gotta be here somewhere. Nope...it's not. The only thing I can think of is that my keys to everything are in his car, probably on the passenger side seat where I tossed them and forgot them (because I was so excited that I was driving this car). And as I'm running out the building to try and catch him, the Transient Alert guys walk in saying that he just drove off.

Crap...well, I'm kind of screwed.

Anyway, the guys are nice and let me crash in the lounge for the evening (they have a huge couch). I managed to catch about three hours of sleep. In the morning at 0630, I'm cold, I'm in my gym clothes, and I'm feeling like crap. And I haven't ironed my uniform, so I'm not only feeling like crap, but I'm looking like crap. Luckily, since it's snowing outside, I had an excuse to wear my GORTEX jacket, so that pretty much covered up the fact that my uniform looked a mess and (oh, by the way), the fact that I didn't have the BDU top on because I'd left that in my office the previous morning and couldn't get to it this morning cuz...I didn't have my keys!!

Later that day, I manage to get a hold of our DV's aide, a Lieutenant Colonel. And when I tell him what happened, he laughs hysterically. Well, I'm glad he's laughing cuz I was dead sure that he was going to think I was the biggest loser in the world. He manages to get the keys out of the General's car for me that afternoon. In the end, I drive home, take a nice long bubble bath, and manage to catch a few more hours of sleep before coming back to work.

posted by Issa Marie @ 9:36 AM