Things That Annoy Me Thursday: When My ID Card Goes Flying Out Of My Hand

To get onto a military base you have to show an ID card. Mine looks like this:

Only with a photo of me. And my information. Clearly.

You pull up to the gate and hand over the card. It's pretty simple.

Except when you go to hand it over and it somehow flies out of your hand and into the backseat of the car.

"Uh.." the gate guard went.

I put my car in park and leaned into the back. I could not see the card anywhere. Cars were starting to line up behind me. I was beginning to panic.

The gate guard was like, "You really can't find it? It flew into the back."

YES I KNOW, KIND SIR!

But I still couldn't find it. Thank you Natalie for tossing all your wrappers everywhere. And what was that brown stain? It better be mud.

"I'll pull over," I said, because I could see the line of cars behind me. People get pissy if they have to wait too long to get onto the base.

"Okay."

At least the gate guard didn't treat me like someone trying to sneak onto the base. He calmly watched as I pulled over, parked, got out of my seat, opened my backdoor and began to paw around for the missing ID card.

"What's the smell?" I muttered as I pushed away a pile of crayons.

Note to self: CLEAN THE CAR!

Cars that drove past were staring. Well. The cars weren't. Obviously. This is not a Disney film. But the people in the cars were gaping at me.

I eventually found the ID card. It was wedged in the side of the front seat. I don't know how it landed like that but when I found it I held it up like it was the Golden Ticket to see Willy Wonka.

"Found it!" I shouted. I waved at a car that went past. The driver looked befuddled.

"Spouse appeared to be doing a cheer at the back gate. Why?" she might have texted to a friend.

The gate guard looked at the card and sent me on my way.

So that was awkward. But at least my car got cleaned. Sort of.