Every Day is Saturday

I attended a retirement ceremony for a career military officer yesterday. With apologies to F. Scott Fitzgerald, career military people, officer and enlisted, and regardless of branch of service, are not like you and me and have reasons above and beyond most of the ones we're comfortable with for why they do what they do.

I know-you've seen the men, almost exclusively men, and white men at that (so white they glow in the dark) flanking the Secretary of Defense when he speaks at a Congressional Sub-Committee on Why Aren't We Lickin' the Taliban the Way We Used to Lick the Rooskies on C-SPAN IV or some such station. I'd argue when you look at the responsibility each of those people has and try to calculate the weight of the worry about what happens if something goes wrong and then look at the paycheck, you'd see they are poorly compensated.

A little more than a year ago a small SEAL (Sea, Earth Land and Air special forces Sailors) team took out Osama bin Laden. There are weeks the head bag boy at Kroeger's makes more than they do (and he probably also scores a couple of hot phone numbers taking the groceries out to the car, if you know what I mean) but it's obviously not a job where you're only in it for the money.

The ceremony yesterday wasn't for a SEAL, but for someone who devoted twenty-eight years of his life to defending our freedom to choose even if that choice is often to be a horse's hindquarters. To allow me if I want to go to work with different colored socks on, with no knock at the door at 2 AM from the hosiery squad. To protect you if you decide to take up the bag pipes and are lousy at it (and yes I was directly inspired by the playing yesterday) from your neighbors just beating you up (though if you were MY neighbor and played that way, you'd be packing, brother, and moving in one motion).

He has a wife and two children who looked to be a little younger than our two. And starting tomorrow, actually more like really on Monday, they get to see a lot more of him than they ever have, perhaps ever planned on. His wife, who married him for better or for worse now has him for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And when he opens his wardrobe in the morning to pick out clothes, he'll be confronted by a panoply of colors instead of the same old, same old stacked on hangers to the ceiling.

Welcome to my world, Sir. Thanks for your service. If you did your job right, and I have no doubt that you did, those whom you trained to follow will learn to lead in good time and carry your example on to another group of enthusiastic beginners somewhere at some point and the cycle will begin again. It's a long week for those who bear the burden but for the rest of us, today, at least, is Saturday.
-bill kenny