Something Stolen, Something Blue
As the clock ominously struck 2:00 am, Pete Petterson stepped out from behind his hiding spot behind the large grandfather clock. He looked around to make sure that he had escaped detection, and was happy to see that everything was going according to plan.
His carefully synchronized watch showed that he had exactly three minutes before the next guard patrol would be coming through the hallway, and he immediately set off into the kitchen. Pete had practiced this operation many times in the training facility, but actually going through with the plan was a different story entirely.
Everything was going well, though. He was moving confidently but silently, gliding towards the kitchen cabinet like a silently gliding piece of aluminum foil, possibly one that had been wadded up into a man-shaped chunk of foil.
Pete placed his hand on the cabinet door, and hesitated. Was he confident that Team Echo had disabled all of the alarms that their reconnaissance had revealed? He had to have faith in them, and told himself to just open the door and stop worrying.
He opened it. No alarms went off. Pete realized he’d been holding his breath, and let it out. So far so good.
And inside the cabinet, just where it was supposed to be, was the dustpan. Pete said a quick prayer of thank you to the dustpan gods; the biggest unknown factor in this whole operation was whether the dustpan might have been put in a different spot between their last round of reconnaissance and tonight’s operation. But there it was, blue and plastic and with a few remnants of toast crumbs still lying in it.
It was beautiful, and everything Pete had dreamed that it could be.
He carefully lifted it out of the cupboard and placed it in the specially sewn dustpan-shaped pocket in his shirt. Once again moving like aluminum foil, he quickly made his way back to the grandfather clock, and down the secret trapdoor that Team Bravo had put in behind it.
And that’s what happened to my dustpan. One day I will get it back. Oh yes, mark my words: the dustpan shall be mine once more.