The Kingdom of Heaven and Travels with Charlie

The kingdom of Heaven is like a lost sock, when, at the first sign of its disappearance, its owner laments the loss and the sad state of its orphaned brother, but, strengthened by resolve, decides to go out looking for it. Retracing every step over staircase, hill and dale, washer and dryer, sweeping every corner for a sign of the errant sock’s existence, until at last it is discovered, and there is much rejoicing; and upon finding the sock, it is lovingly brought back to its friends and its owner tells all those who care about it (and even the ones who don’t), “See? This is a sock that was lost, and now is found; for as it is written, ‘it is not good for a sock to be alone.’” And verily, verily, there was much rejoicing.

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And now for something altogether different, a segment which I shall call “Travels with Charlie,” in the spirit of the great Californian novelist and today’s evacuations.

If you work on the Hill, if you ever have the option of being evacuated with your boss or without your boss, choose the first option. But I’m getting ahead of myself… it all started innocently enough with a Chick-Fil-A lunch-to-be, as most trouble at work generally starts. At 11:59 a.m., precisely one minute before we were scheduled to consume the freshly arrived food, the sound of the sirens pierced our collective noetic structures and sent out wishes for warm chicken pieces tumbling down.

Now, the amusing thing was, the Chief of Staff’s first concern was removing said Chick-Fil-A spread and bringing it with us to our emergency rendezvous point. Which I thought was a great idea. As they endeavored to reload the coolers and balance the coleslaw, though, I heard the enunciator say something about an incoming aircraft, this is not a drill, and I remembered one rather important thing: we were on the top floor and we had to take the stairs.

Promptly stuffing a half dozen chicken sandwiches in my purse (to feed the hungry troops once we got outside), I took for the stairs. Two of my colleagues were vaguely in front of me, and I assumed the rest would soon follow. The obnoxious thing was that on every landing for every floor on the way down, a photojournalist was simultaneously on the phone and filming us. Some people were already writing it off and others were panicking. I was somewhere in the middle, but mostly wondering, okay, if this is my last day on earth, do I really want a picture of me with a worried look on my face on the front page of the Washington Post tomorrow? I don’t think so. And for two seconds, I was glad I didn’t go into journalism.

Outside, I managed to find my rendezvous point and realized that no one else was there. By this point I’d called Allis to ask “could you please go online and find out why I’m being evacuated?” No news was yet posted. I tried to call Chris to see if I could locate him, but of course everyone and their mother was on their cell phones to say that they didn’t know anything but they’d call again when they did. Consequently, every cell phone server in the Washington D.C. area crashed, and I don’t think a successful cell phone call was made for an hour. Finally, David showed up, and the Capitol Police promptly told us to keep moving away from the buildings. I reminded David (whose tenure exceeds mine by some years) that the backup meeting point is Charlies’ apartment. He said, and I quote, “Oh, yeah!” and we proceeded to make our way through the huddled masses that lines the streets and in between the stopped cars that were trying to leave the complex. (Ha.)

After almost running directly into/over Dennis Kucinich (which I don’t remember, but David relayed the fact to me later), we found ourselves at the apartment/campaign office. Charlie and Loddy beat us there. I was struck by two things: one, for a Member of Congress, Charlie lives in a very humble abode; and two, I was pretty calm, considering it was me. My adrenaline was pumping, to be sure, but I had no way to express it, and I didn’t. This resulted in me feeling rather out of sorts for the rest of the day, but so it goes. At least I didn’t go into hysterics. That would’ve been embarrassing.

And of course, now, going into hysterics seems laughable, but it’s a lot different reading this on a website or seeing the story on the evening news versus you’re there, being evacuated, right now, and you have no idea what is going on, and you just don’t know. So we sat and ate some of the sandwiches until the all clear was given around 1:00 pm. They’d skipped the pickles on mine. I was disappointed.

Anyway, the great thing about being with Charlie was getting back. We loaded up the van with his scooter and his oxygen and ourselves and drove right up to the buildings, into the parking lot, bypassing security because after all, you’re with the Congressman. It was pretty awesome, especially considering the ridiculous lengths of the security lines. Plus it meant we got to the sweet tea faster.

Loddy relayed that when they cleared the floor of the House, it was quite the scene, but they made sure Charlie got out alright. They road the scooter all the way to the apartment, though Loddy maintains he walked… we know better. :-P

So let this be a lesson to you: stand by your boss. It’s the safe thing to do. And when it’s no longer a safety issue, it certainly does make life a lot easier.