Guards, arrest that man!

Well, my 'a' key is still being a pest but I wanted to tell you some fun stories about the guards in my life so I'll just keep administering CPR with my pinky and hopefully everything will work out.
My first memories involving guards was in Karachi, Pakistan at age 4-6. We lived down the street from KAS (Karachi American School, naturally). Our house was surrounded by a brick wall and there was a black iron gate at the front entrance. Everyday stood a guard inside the gate, keeping us safe. I don't remember ever having any incident where the guard actually had to fend bad guys away or anything but nevertheless it's comforting to look back and say, 'yeah, we had a guard.' I only remember 2 different ones, maybe we had more, who knows? The first was tall, dark and not un-handsome. He was lanky and somewhat nerdy. He wore Coke-bottle glasses and an olive-colored uniform. [I must digress for just a bit on the topic of uniforms. I have a theory regarding why women get all weak for a man in uniform. One, it's like the french maid thing for guys, in reverse. If every so often you see a french maid stepping out of a house to take out the trash or water the roses you (guys) would be like 'whoah, that's pretty hot'. So girls see a cop, army guy or even UPS guy and suddenly we're all a-flutter. Two, maybe it's an authority thing or an authority/fantasy thing. I haven't quite figured out the psychology of it yet but I just know it happens unconsciously.]
So anyway, maybe it was his uniform, maybe his geekiness but I was always trying to provoke him. I'd go out and try to talk to him, ask him questions, and for candy. He seemed perturbed and really wanted to be left alone. Once in a while I'd see him eating some pale yellow food he'd brought with him. Vague memory, not a lot to say about him. But the second one was older, shorter and stouter. He was much more congenial toward kids. Infact, whenever he was there my little brother and I would always go out and ask him for candy. He had a magic trick that we loved. He'd reach up toward a tree on the other side of the wall and clap his hands as he said "Come on! Come on!" with the claps and vocal emphasis on the word 'come'. Then he'd close his hands together and have us blow on them. When he opened his hands there would be two toffees in plastic wrappers. Never failed to amuse us.
My next guard memories take us four or five years later when we lived in Tokyo, Japan. We were in a part of Tokyo called Roppongi. Anyone who knows the area knows it's kind of a naughty party spot but my friends and I were never aware of this because we were like 10 and our version of going out together begins with a phone call where we say 'Hi, can you play?'
One of our favorite games was called 'Spying on the guards'. This time we lived on an american compound with a front and back gate and a guard at each in a little box not much larger than a telephone booth. In this game we'd start our clandestine mission a ways away in some trees and we'd creep along stealthily, seeing how close we could get to the guard before they spotted us. And they always would before we got too close. It was great fun. Among our group of 4-5 girls, we had one friend who always seemed to get hurt or in trouble. She was the daring one, the one with the untamed tomboy spirit. Once we were crawling in the grass on another mission toward the back gate when our friend stuck her knee in some really mucky dog doo-doo. My thought was, 'of course this was going to happen to her! It always happens to her, no one else.'
Another place we lived there were MP's (military police) at the gates. By that time I was too old for such games. When we moved in they had just started to beef up security. Everyone had an ID card required to get in. They said it used to be that the guards hardly really checked your ID. You could just hold up a graham cracker and they waved you through. Seems they learned their lesson by the time we got there.
Final memory with guards. The last place we lived had really tough ones. You didn't even want to think about playing with them. They carried around machine guns! Or...something like that.
I'm getting carpel tunnel so I'll leave you with something to ponder until next time. I ask my husband this one all the time: If a tree falls down in the middle of a forrest and no one is around to hear it, did it really fall? Think about it and what it means in your life.
Angie