There’s the Rub

               Lateral Entry  are 2 words which gives me a dose of embarrassment unlike any other words in the English Dictionary.  It opens up a window in my past that brought the RD and me together. I could still recall in detail how I was dressed in the traditional blue GOA uniform, all 9 of us aspirants for the rank of Police Inspector in a quota for 4 Aircraft Maintenance Officers (AMO) way back in ‘99. We were facing a final deliberation board inside a disclosed room at NHQ, Camp Crame made up of the top brass of the service, the RD among them. There was a question and answer portion regarding personal and aviation related subjects where all of us were being graded. Each of us was facing a desktop microphone where each has the turn to speak up. To speak, one has to turn the button on and have it off afterwards. My only memory of the RD was a gesture of concern to turn off the microphone after I have spoken, a member of the board boasted about disqualifying anybody who forgot to turn off the microphone.  Whatever transpired at that undertaking however was suggestive of the TV Gameshow on Channel 13 “The Weakest Link”. I’ve underestimated the scope of the saying that goes, “It’s not what you know but whom you know”. As for me, it was a sad fate to have succumbed into the truth of the saying.

                We finished eating and the flash in my memory extinguished itself. We stood up with a word to the RD for our return at the chopper for the gas up. Still, it was amusing to survive in a future time and meet people that remind you of disasters and tragedies. We returned at the chopper when the sun has climbed above the horizon at the top of its rays heating up the curious folks milling around the aircraft. Mostly boys and girls at the tender age of curiosity, they have gathered around the chopper and touched the fuselage, whatever part they could get a hold on and leave fingerprints. I have done less effort to scold them for they are noted recidivists. Taking them within safe distance, I took the gas pump inside the cargo hatch and prepared for the gas up. I cleaned the top of the drum and took an open wrench inside the toolbox teamed up with a screw driver that opened the drum’s lid. PSI Enrico assisted in the installation of the gas pump tubing and we took our turns holding the end of the hose by the tank opening and operating the pump while PSI Vicente was standing watch. We had transferred the contents of a drum in time to accomplish the task before lunch. I was left behind the aircraft to stand watch for the rest of the morning sitting by the grasses with the SAF troopers at the shade of the tail boom. We watched the local photographer feasting to take photographs with the majorettes using the chopper as a backdrop. I was reminded of my first sight of a helicopter when I was 8. I used to be in grade 2 when I managed to go to town with my late mother taking her office as the Local Government Officer (LGO) under the former DLGCD. It was the eve of the town fiesta at Patnoñgon in the province of Antique so with the current solons of  the time as guests, I chanced upon the landing of the former Ambassador Roberto S. Benedicto’s chopper in the middle of the Central Elementary School’s plaza. It was a Bell 206 Jetranger as I could make out from my memory. And it was the first time that I have drawn a helicopter out of curiosity as I was lured to smuggle an intermediate pad and pen way back at my mother’s office and sketch the thing resting on the grass. Barely 2 decades hence, I may have been short of winning a political seat to win a lift in a government aircraft but I still had my seat owing to my assignment. My mother would have been amused seeing me share a seat with the Secretary while I’m working in her old Department.