15/02/2002 - 7:35 p.m.

My daddy was a family frogman, my mama's in the naval reserves.

Had to go to the military base to drop my brother off for a Boy Scout thing. That was scary. Not really scary, I guess, but not a comfortable position to be in. I'm a little paranoid about military types anyway- a lot of them think they have to act like our hall monitors, or drill sargeants, or Mafia men, and that everybody's shown up just specially to commit horrible crimes against humanity.

Well, right now, everything's very very secure and/or top secret and, actually, why they agreed to let the Boy Scouts in I don't know, but they did. Everybody going to the event was told that everyone who passed through the gates had to be checked in and they'd search every tenth car, so to be short, I was kind of hoping I wouldn't have to go along on the little outing. Turns out I did.

We drive in by some random back gate that only the truckers know about because the front gate's closed to visitors. At the gate there's this girl with this HUGE gun, it's almost as big as her (granted, she's four feet tall, but still), whose job is checking everybody in. It turns out that little brother has no idea where he's supposed to be and so they want ID. Father and brother hand their's over. I do have an ID, but I don't carry it about with me: I don't drive, and I certainly don't expect to find myself wandering onto military bases in times of increased military security. So, I'm scrunched up as small and 12-years-old looking in the back seat as I can get. I'm in luck- my father explains I haven't got one so she takes a quick look at me and says I'm OK. I found that much nicer than being shot.

She finally tells us to follow some van or another and we start to drive at a good slow pace through the place. You know how they display tanks and things in parades? Well, here, the parade was stopped and we were the ones driving through it, and it wasn't just some small town Memorial Day parade either- oh no, this was the big 4th of July parade in Washington laid out around us. By now it's 5:30 and starting to get dark and the place is full of random slowly driving cars with emblems on the sides. Ugh.

We got my brother checked in and dropped off, but I will not be going to pick him up on Sunday.