Way back when I was a young pup, in early college, I had a four year scholarship that turned into a two year scholarship and then disappeared entirely when I changed my major. This was back when college didn't cost like $30,000 a semester, but still, there was some consternation about how I was gonna pay for the rest of school. So I thought what the hell, I'll join the Air Force like my dad did. Then I'll have a job waiting for me when I get out, and school will be paid for, and all manner o'things will be well.
So I went down and saw a recruiter, as one does. He kind of looked at me funny when I asked about being stationed in Minot, North Dakota but said "Yeah, I'm pretty sure we can do that." I mentioned all this to my dad. He was happy. He brought home a bottle of champagne and an impromptu celebration broke out. Everything was going great until my dad suddenly said, "Wait a minute. This is a really bad idea."
He's only ever said this one other time, that I can remember, so I stopped and asked why. He said I did not have the right stuff for military service. Specifically, he said I had a "low bullshit tolerance." Which, in the military, can be fatal. So I ended up not joining the Air Force. I think that was probably the right call. And we found other ways to pay for school and I did not have a job waiting for me when I got out. But I eventually found one and life went on.
Today is Veterans Day. If you know a veteran, or a soldier, please take a sec to say thank you to them for getting shot at on your behalf. If you can, maybe also offer to give that person a hand with something. Older vets might, say, need their lawn mowed, or need a ride to a medical appointment. Or maybe you could help them change their light bulbs because they're not very handy getting up on a ladder these days. Younger vets and soldiers might need a hand with child care, or help understanding tax forms, or just some of the weird stuff in life that a lot of us struggle with. If nothing else, most of them could use an ear. It never hurts to ask.
I'm fresh off a project at work where I talked to a lot of veterans on the phone. Most of them were from the Desert Storm era but some were younger. All of them had some pretty amazing stories. Like the guy (they were mostly guys, but a few ladies) who participated in a prank that pissed off a superior officer and ended up getting reassigned to Diego Garcia. I had to ask him where that was. (It's a little island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, literally a thousand miles from the nearest land mass.) One guy, when I asked where he was stationed in Iraq, said, "Well, we weren't really stationed anywhere. I mean, we slept on the runway the first few days. Then in some abandoned houses. I stayed at Saddam's palace for a week. That was nice. And in the Holiday Inn Baghdad. There is one. They didn't have the free breakfast, though." A couple of them saw IEDs explode and kill people, some at close range, some farther away. Some had been attacked by angry civilians. And one guy was captured tortured, and eventually ransomed back to his outfit by some local tribesmen after his convoy was hit by a kind of improvised missile that killed three of his men. "But it's cool. I've had therapy." (!!)
I was doing this project from my house, or from a climate controlled office near downtown Dallas. The closest I ever got to doing anything dangerous in life was working for the U.S. Government when I was younger and more spry, working on disaster relief after Hurricane Katrina. And even then I was doing exciting stuff like proofreading mortgage documents and making sure field agents had good maps and directions in a landscape where many of the road signs had been washed away. I have never flown a helicopter or carried sandbags or pointed a rifle at anybody. I think my dad was right. I do not have the right stuff. I do, however, have a famously low bullshit tolerance. This can only help you in life.
Also, I vote. And you should too. You can vote because a whole lot of veterans stood up to a somewhat addled English king and an emperor and a guy with a toothbrush moustache and some other emperor and Saddam Hussein and a scad of Karl Marx cultists and and said, "No, I don't think so." Voting is how we help keep people from having to go fight wars in the first place. I hope that one of these days, the idea of needing armies to be ready to fight people will become sort of a joke, like how we joke now about needing garlic to fend off vampires. But until that happens, we will have more soldiers and more wars and more veterans. So when you can, help them out. Slava Ukranii. Thank you and goodnight.
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