Making it to first base

On our trip South we decided to stop at my little brother's.  He's in flight school and stationed at a base on the way.  My grandparents had loaned us a GPS since the fiasco of a trip my brother had when he first headed to the base.  Apparently cell reception is a wee bit spotty in the Deep South and his iPhone lost Google Map capabilities.  It only added a couple hours to his trip, but wandering around in the backwoods of the Deep South can be a bit more intimidating than wandering around in the backwoods of the South.  My cousin, Lily, and I were not interested in random encounters with shotgun-toting, moonshine-chugging, gator-wrestling gentlemen so we were using the GPS.

Even with the GPS, we were a little leery of the surroundings.  The base was a ways out - far enough out that we were pretty sure that a serial killer had hacked into our system and was luring us to our premature death.

We evaded capture by our imaginary serial killer, made it to base, and pulled into the Korean Baptist Church outside the gates.

There are three things you need to make it onto a military base: identification, registration, and proof of current insurance. Normally I would have all three.  This time we had two of the three.  I had apparently tucked the registration somewhere in our file cabinet.  Which was safely in our packing truck.  Waiting for us at our new house.  Five hours away.

After he flat out denied us access to the base, the nice guard told us we could park our car in the guard lot overnight and ride in with my sister-in-law.  Our little car was packed with everything that was too important or too breakable to go in the moving truck so I was a little leery about leaving it out of eyesight. I thought I should double check the safety of our shoes and KitchenAid being left unsupervised.

"Mr. Guard, sir, will our car be safe here?  No one is going to steal our plants, are they?"

He peered at us over the beam of his flashlight.

"No ma'am.  We have Berettas.  Guns tend to deter thieves."

Shades of grey

I adore my brother. He’s a pilot in the military stationed a few states away and with a schedule as busy as mine, so I don’t get to see him very often.  I was able to spend about an hour with him last week before he had to go to flight class and I had to head east. I laughed more in that hour than I had in weeks. We don’t always agree, but I adore the man.  

Me: Do you know what I like about you?  

Little Brother:  That I’m so good looking?  

Me: Obviously, but I like how you see things in black and white.  You never see any grey areas.  

Little Brother:  Grey is for liberals.