Lillian Too

In college, I worked for two summers at the nearby air force base as an administrative assistant, taking calls and messages for the multitude of pilots in the squadron, making copies, sending faxes, running errands, that kind of thing. Since the pilots were always in and out, or gone for long stretches at a time, it was hard for me to learn their various ranks and names – and sometimes it was questionable whether or not they knew mine. One LtCol in particular called me "Lillian" for the entire summer before he was most embarrassingly, that is, publicly, corrected. We had all been sitting around at one of the semi-regular Friday "top secret" meetings with the purpose of giving call signs to the newest members of the squadron. Call signs are funny little nicknames that they assign more often than not according to an embarrassing story that's followed you throughout your career, e.g. the captain called "Stinky", or sometimes as a play on one's name. When the subject of my call sign came up and the ideas started flying, the LtCol in question asked, rather loudly, "Who's Vivian?" Anyway so I had myself a private laugh this morning when one of the preschool teachers for the other class called me "Lillian".