There’s this band, maybe you’ve heard of them, called The Ramones. They’re no more now, but they left behind a whole bunch of songs that all sound the same and all kick ass. One of them goes on and on about how “the KKK took my baby away.”
Well, that’s the tune I’ve been humming all morning. Why? Well, one of my best friends just took a promotion where he works, which requires him to relocate to Virginia – the state. He also just so happens to work for the FBI. So, I took that Ramones song and reworked it a little bit, “the FBI took my buddy away…” GET IT!?
Yesterday, a group of us went over to his house for a little farewell and good-luck party thrown by his parents. Apart from the repeated congratulations that his wife is pregnant with everyone’s soon to arrive newest buddy, Dave and I tried to offer up whatever wisdom we could scrape together.
I mean, really, what can you say to your friend who’s moving to Virginia for a super special job for the FBI? Dave and I dug deep into out collective knowledge, realized in no time that all we know is from movies, and then presented our great pal with what seemed to be, at the time, and endless supply of thoughts, advice, and council.
“Buddy,” we said, “don’t be a dick. You know how when the local authorities have the place surrounded, and they’re about to send someone in to negotiate, and then the ‘Feds’ show up and then all the local cops get pissed? Don’t do that.”
“Just because the guy’s demanding a helicopter and all that unmarked money, it doesn’t mean you have to give it to him. We know that the FBI’s funding is limitless, but come on, it’s old already.”
“OOH! If you want to practice, you should totally play Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six games on your PlayStation. That’s totally cool, very covert-op kind of stuff, and secretive too. Hell, just read some Tom Clancy books.”
“Does this mean you’re going to be like Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and Clear And Present Danger? DO YOU GET TO MEET HARRISON FORD!? That’s cool.”
See how much we know about the FBI!? And we never had any kind of training or study in national security! Easy…
Anyway, my pal is moving up in the world. He’s a G-Man and for a good long while that impressed me, but now I know that being a G-Man means he gets to go on all kinds of wild adventures – adventures that mean he’s going to explore the farthest reaches of the world where, even though hundreds of henchmen working for an illegal drug cartel might be firing all sorts of semi-automatic weapons at him, only his Hum-V will burst into flames and be destroyed and he’ll simply walk away slightly dirty, shirt slightly torn, and his fist still holding on to his top secret briefcase.
Oh, and his name’s not ‘Buddy’. He has a much more real, much cooler, much more agent-ish a name than ‘Buddy’. I’m keeping his true name secret, you know, for his protection.
