MISSIVE #25--Take Me To Your Lizard, Too

MISSIVE #25—Take Me To Your Lizard, Too

 

Wherein I discuss political leaders and other rot

 

Those who have followed my missives from the first book to this point might remember the first “Take Me To Your Lizard,” in which I discussed meeting a Michigan Congressman by taking a helicopter from Tattooine to Elton John. I called him a lizard because a dear friend and mentor had talked about a science fiction book he had considered writing. In this book, all the politicians in this particular world were lizards, and all were a bit…shall we say…untrustworthy.

 

Not that I was insinuating that the Michigan Congressman was in any way untrustworthy. Natch.

 

Last week, I flew from TX-Alpha to IL-Chi to US-Beta, then hopped in a car to head down to DC-Delta, so I could meet lots of lizards. I was in US-Beta all of 45 minutes during the turnaround.

 

I made a few glaring mistakes during this five galaxy jaunt, which I’ll get to a bit later in the missive.

 

I was pretty tired when I got to DC-Delta that night. But morning came early, because I had to meet my small group at an intelligence facility which will remain nameless, as this information could be used against me at a later time.

 

Perhaps I should explain what I was really doing, besides just meeting lots of lizards. As the First Resident Course Director, I coordinate the DC-Delta trip for almost 400 students in June. Our trip is one day long, and we do a lot in that day. To prepare for this event, I thought I’d go down when the resident astronauts took their DC-Delta trip, and take advantage of this time to perform a little reconnaissance.

 

It was a nice thought while it lasted.

 

The resident astronaut program desperately needed escorts for the trip, and since I have a top secret clearance, I was a particularly appealing target for this duty. This escort job was not just for one day, but for all three days of the trip.

 

Thus, I found myself, bright and early Monday morning, surrendering my ID card to get an access badge to a super top secret, secret squirrel operation. We all huddled into a top secret compartmented conference room, super hush-hush, for seven hours of:

 

UNCLASSIFIED BRIEFINGS.

 

Oh well. I had dinner with my high school best friend whom I had not seen since my wedding day, so it was all good.

 

Did I mention I’d made a couple glaring errors during my transition from one mode of transportation to the other? My biggest mistakes occurred because I was switching from my digital camouflage uniform to my fancy green uniform, complete with jacket. I’d prepped the greens (imperfectly, it turned out), and they were all packed, but in my rush to switch from one carry-on to the other, I’d left my hat sitting on my dresser at home.

 

I had to wear the greens on Tuesday, to visit the Lizard capitol of the free world. Luckily, I’d noticed the hat wasn’t there in time to ask someone to buy another one for me. Unfortunately, it was at 11:30 Monday night that I noticed I had forgotten to pin my nametag onto my greens jacket. It was still sitting on a sweater. In my dresser, at home.

 

Now it was panic time. Under no circumstances could I go nametagless to the Lizard capitol. I know you non-military types just don’t get this, but IT JUST ISN’T DONE. I would be OUT OF UNIFORM.

 

After I jump-started my breathing mechanism again,  I took stock of my options and came up with three courses of action: 1) Go nametagless. As I mentioned before, this was not feasible or acceptable. It was, what we in the business would call, a throwaway course of action. 2) Where my gold nametag, which I wear in US-Beta when I am not in uniform. Not an ideal option, but better than going bare. 3) Borrow someone else’s if they had an extra nametag. This is not as crazy as it might sound; many, if not most astronauts have one name tag on their shirts and another on their jackets. Not me, of course. Because one of my name tags is at my REAL home, nestled on one of my old shirts, so I’m short on the little critters already.

 

By midnight, my decision was made. At 6:45 a.m. I called a colleague, who was coming in from doing PT, and luckily, he did have two nametags. “We’ll be married!” he said.

 

That morning, I dodged comments like, “Your uniform! It’s so bright, shiny, and…inaccurate!” and “Well, we have an imposter in our midst!” and “So, was this a recent wedding?” But amazingly, very few noticed. And none of the lizards had any idea.

 

Which lizards did we see? Well, we saw the senior legal counsel for the majority for the House Administrative Committee. A mouthful, I know, but he was actually very interesting. We met the military advisor to a Congressman from Tennessee. This guy was kind enough to take us on a stupendous tour of the Capitol, where we saw lots of lizard statues. We went into the gallery for both the House and Senate. We saw Mitch McConnell, and the representative from New York who was naming a post office for a fallen marine, and John McCain, and another senator I recognized but couldn’t put a name to. You’d recognize him, too, because he’s really well-known. He has famous, flooffy white hair.

 

Finally, we went to visit a senator who will remain nameless, because what I say could and would be used against me. He got points for having his military advisors brief us. He also got points for actually coming in to speak with us, too. He started to lose points when he opened his mouth. My take on it was that he couldn’t look at us when he spoke, and couldn’t finish a sentence. He also made a somewhat inappropriate comment about “broads.” I mean, I realize I was the only woman in the room, but come on…Another astronaut, though, put his finger on it later. He said, “Good God, he was almost incoherent. And he’s MY senator!”

 

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was as exhausted as I was at this point.

 

The last day was spent at Homeland Security and the State Department, where we sat in more rooms and listened to more lizards. By Wednesday’s end, I had had my fill of reptilian creatures. I gave my borrowed nametag back to my “husband for the day,” and headed back to my spacepod away from home.

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