Please wait...
I remember getting free cokes at a USO in Manhattan once. First time I'd heard of one (I was maybe 12 - brat's privilege) :)
Once upon a time, I finished training, went to my first one-weekend-a-month,
and found out we were deploying for Afghanistan. I had to sit through another
four weeks of tedious contract IT employment, but then we got to mobilize
for active duty. But I was not the newest member of the team; one brand new
intelligence analyst finished school on Friday, drove home, and mobilized
with us on Monday.
They put her on a team operating equipment on Blackhawk helicopters. She got airsick every time they went up. She refused to stop. She got better.
She fell in love with helicopters. When our piece of the war ended, she came back and asked to become a helicopter pilot. The Army said no. The Air Force said no. The Navy said maybe. The Marines said "Here is your start date."
So she filled out paperwork, parted one day as an Army National Guard Sergeant, and commissioned the next as a Marine 2nd Lieutenant. Of course the school dates didn't work out and there were other bumps and delays and whatnot, but now she is all grown up and flies Cobra gunships for the Marine Corps. And we all talk about her from time to time and I use her as an example when talking to my junior soldiers about personal dreams and the Army's plans and how ultimately you will always part ways with the Big Green Mother and it's up to you to figure out when and where and how and why.
Anyway, she's stationed in San Diego with her husband, also a Marine aviator, so we're going to get together and talk Afghanistan and helicopters and how everybody else is also grown up now and of that cohort of soldiers who came in at the same time, I'm the only enlisted guy left.
It's hard to describe wartime friends and what it means to see somebody from back then. And it's really cool to see her, too, just because she was sort of kid sister to us all and now she outranks us by a fair margin. The Marines got the better end of that deal, but they were smart and jumped on an opportunity.
They put her on a team operating equipment on Blackhawk helicopters. She got airsick every time they went up. She refused to stop. She got better.
She fell in love with helicopters. When our piece of the war ended, she came back and asked to become a helicopter pilot. The Army said no. The Air Force said no. The Navy said maybe. The Marines said "Here is your start date."
So she filled out paperwork, parted one day as an Army National Guard Sergeant, and commissioned the next as a Marine 2nd Lieutenant. Of course the school dates didn't work out and there were other bumps and delays and whatnot, but now she is all grown up and flies Cobra gunships for the Marine Corps. And we all talk about her from time to time and I use her as an example when talking to my junior soldiers about personal dreams and the Army's plans and how ultimately you will always part ways with the Big Green Mother and it's up to you to figure out when and where and how and why.
Anyway, she's stationed in San Diego with her husband, also a Marine aviator, so we're going to get together and talk Afghanistan and helicopters and how everybody else is also grown up now and of that cohort of soldiers who came in at the same time, I'm the only enlisted guy left.
It's hard to describe wartime friends and what it means to see somebody from back then. And it's really cool to see her, too, just because she was sort of kid sister to us all and now she outranks us by a fair margin. The Marines got the better end of that deal, but they were smart and jumped on an opportunity.
So I'm dealing with this person who seems to be in a pissy mood about 80% of the time.
If he were an attorney, he could single-handedly make up the law firm of Jekyll, Hyde, Hyde, Hyde, and Hyde.
I know I like talking to brat friends about our army experiences (yes, it's different, but it very much separates us from our non-brat peers)
saltg
I went to a random letter generator site to get some random musings for this room. It returned "saltg" which I
assume is two greater than "salte"
I went to a random letter generator site to get some random musings for this room. It returned "saltg" which I
assume is two greater than "salte"
It's always fun when the instructor is trying to demonstrate the prevalence
of this bad security practice with a simple Google search and he can't actually
find any examples.
Today at 4:04:14 the date looked like 040414 040414, this will not happen for one hundred years. Take the day
off, have sex with the wife, eat cookies, drink beer.
off, have sex with the wife, eat cookies, drink beer.