Pentagon Kabuki Theater…

November 29, 2006 in Washington

My friend Bill and I, who was also military, used to take daily walks through the hallways just to get out of the stress of our offices.  One day a tour stopped ahead of us and an Air Force guide began peeling off bits of useless info about the building.  I looked at Bill and asked him if he wanted in on what I was about to do.  Bill was up for anything.

I said, “run, and keep up with me!”

Bill and I quickly shot into an all-out-sprint, right for the tour.  As we got close I began yelling, “Make a hole! Make a hole!”  The Air Force Sergeant guiding the tourists began yelling at them to move to one side of the hallway and they parted, opening a lane for us to get through.  Bill and I had looks of horror plastered on our faces and our uniforms barely clinged to our bodies as we raced by.  The reactions of those people in the tour told the entire story, they thought the world was coming to an end.

After we were out of sight we ducked into a stairwell and laughed our ass’s off for half an hour.  I have no doubt that those people went home and scoured the news for anything that could be attributed to two Navy idiots sprinting by them in a Pentagon hallway.  But one thing was for sure, when those people walked out of the Pentagon that day, they thought that was the best tour they had ever taken.  It was 3 seconds of theater that left people wanting more.

We ended up doing this a couple of times a week.  And sometimes we would do it on our own.  We would call each other up and trade stories about the tourists reactions and how they were just soaking it in.  

After several of these manic moments we realized that the Air Force tours guides were catching on, but they found it entertaining and never said a word.

Sometimes we would run through with a hand full of papers, other times one of us would tell the other, making sure that the tour could hear, “We need to hurry, there’s not much time!” 

Bill wasn’t good about saying anything because he would lose it. He would be in tears the second we started running and by the time we reached the tour, his hand was over his mouth, his face was bright red and he was running like a penguin in his feeble attempt to suppress laughter.  I am sure there were moments where people thought he was running to a bathroom more than anything else.

Someone running in the Pentagon definitely catches your attention, even pre-9/11, even if you worked there.  It’s a building that just wreaks excitement sometimes.  Tearing through a tour had an effect as you could hear it in their comments like, “Oh dear”, or “Wow”, or “Holy shit”, or the obvious, “Something is going on!”  

Sometimes you would feel the flashbulb of a camera on your cornea and realize that you are probably going to be framed on a wall somewhere to enhance someone’s story about the time they visited the Pentagon.

And then one day, by myself, I launched into my run towards the tour. I noticed the tour was abnormal.  Taller than most.  All men.  They were all wearing blue.  And after I screamed, “Move, Move, Move”, the crowd parted except for one of the smaller guys who stood confused in the middle of the lane.  To miss him I had to contort my body sideways and off balance.  As I passed within inches of him I realized that this was point guard Bobby Hurley and that the people of the tour were the newly crowned NCAA National Champions, the Duke University Basketball Team.  And before I could further process this information, I smacked into a wall with my right shoulder, knocked over a display of pamphlets and fell on top of a dirty mail cart.  This was quickly followed by a chorus of sympathetic moans from everyone witnessing my horrific spill of destruction.  I limped away, slumping in a stairwell wondering if my shoulder was broken.

When I got back to my office my boss asked me why there was giant scuff mark on my nice white uniform which I had failed to notice. “I ran into a wall”, I told him with no further explanation.

“They will getcha sometimes”, he said. 

As it turned out this was one of my last performances.   

Shortly after I smacked the wall I got a promotion and was unable to continue what Bill and I had started.  But I never passed a tour where I didn’t want to break into a mad sprint while screaming out, “Move, move, move, there’s not much time!”

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