Bring Your Child to Work Day, Embassy Style

I'v been to one Bring Your Child to Work Day before. It was when we lived in Florida and my dad was in the Air Force. I was about seven years old, and that was probably one of the funnest days of my seven-year-old life.

We had driven to the military base where my dad worked and went up to his office. All of the people in the offices nearby had come out to talk to me and bring me candy, saying I was the cutest thing, I would grow up to be just like my dad someday, stuff like that.

I barely listened, I was just looking at all of the stuff they had in their offices, candy dispensers, posters, computers, gas masks hanging on the walls, it looked like the coolest place in the world.

But finally we broke away from all of my dad's colleagues and went to his office. That was probably the best part. He had a dart board and lots of things stashed away that he did in his free time, and one of them was a little golf ball shooter. You hit the ball into the ramp, and it would go around in a U and come right back out on the other side. That was the first thing we did, and I remember it clearly.

We brought it out into the hallway and each got a golf club and took turns trying to hit it into the shooter. But there was a catch, we had to be really quiet because my dad's boss' office was right next door, so we were running all over the place to keep it from hitting walls and especially his door. But when it was my turn to hit it, I hit the golfball pretty hard, it missed the shooter and rammed right into Mr. Boss' door. We grabbed all of the stuff we had brought out, ran into my dad's office, and shut the door.

The rest of the day was spent with visits to the control tower, scanning our hands on a copying machine, and getting sodas from the vending machine. Like I said, it was one of the funnest days in my seven-year-old life.


I went four years without another Bring Your Child to Work Day, with everywhere we moved in those four years, his job changed slighty, and it just wasn't acceptable to bring your kid to work with you.

But now he works at a U.S. Embassy, and their Bring Your Child to Work Day probably beats most others.

We were given demonstrations from a lot of the offices, my dad's office did a protection demonstration, they used me as a VIP and they showed how they ushered people safely in a detail, and what they did in emergencies while they were protecting someone. When they joked about me being Hannah Montana while they were protecting me, one of the office guys ran up and tried to attack me. Getting me to safety consisted of my feet being stepped on by several people, a flip-flop being left behind, and being shoved into a bullet-proof car. All in all it went great!

The other offices did pretty cool things too, but nothing topped my dad's office, it was interactive, real, and really entertaining, especially for the kids that were then assigned to protect me, and try to copy the adults.

I would say second place has to go to the Marines. They let us play video games, where we got to shoot people. The guys in our group loved that.

Bring Your Child to Work Day here was more like a Show Your Kids What Each Office Does Day, but it was really fun, and I enjoyed it nevertheless.