Skip to main content

Melancholy musing and machismo.

I had always thought about doing it. It had always been there in the back of my mind. From when I had a glorified vision of it to when I rebelled against the idea and, finally, to when I understood and accepted what it actually was. It's been a lurking urge somewhere inside of me--for better or worse--somehow related to an obsessive search for purpose and balance and maybe even some kind of naive patriotism. Enlisting.

"Yeah, honestly: I've always wanted to do it." He said. "The discipline and the structure and the hierarchy; I like following orders. I could be a surgeon and also be in the Army. It's like having two lives: saving lives in one and saving the country in the other. I don't want to sit around after college for months and not do anything. I'll never be able to do anything with my life after that. I want to do something, you know?" Then, when the others were around, he continued. "And I really want to kill somebody."

I had a hard time paying attention after that. I sat there chewing my food and thinking about everything I knew. He asked about all the benefits that came with it. Things I had never really been concerned about. Benefits? I'd never actually sat down and thought about any benefits. Or costs. My dad always frowned at the people who preoccupied themselves with the benefits. "They think they're owed something," he told me. "They can only think about what the Army 'should' give them. They never once think about what they can give, and that's why they never go anywhere." It was a lesson I've tried to apply to everything, with limited success.

The conversation went on, and I got further away from it. I couldn't deal with the silliness. It was so... childish. So I ignored the pseudo-macho posturing and the emotionless bullshit and smiled and nodded until it was time to leave. "When you think about doing it," he said. "Give me a call." I smiled and nodded.

"Have you ever thought about doing Army stuff?" My dad asked me. I thought for a few moments before I answered. We were driving to La Grange on what had been a mostly silent road trip. "I don't know." I said.

"That's okay." He said.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Past the butterfly wall.

Spontaneous pneumothorax is a collection of air or gas in the space between the lungs and the chest that "collapses" the lung and prevents it from inflating completely.  Spontaneous means there is no traumatic injury to the chest or lung.   There are two types of spontaneous pneumothorax: primary and secondary. Primary spontaneous pneumothorax occurs in people without lung disease. It occurs most often in tall, thin, young people. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket but I can't answer it. We are in the middle of rehearsal. It is not an uncommon event. We continue to play. The strap of my saxophone cuts into my neck. The nylon is rough against my skin. I look out of place. Everyone else is dressed casually; shorts, shirts, shoes optional. There I stand, a button down shirt and slacks. I'm entitled to dress up a little. It's my birthday. My phone vibrates again. I always used to roll my eyes whenever I saw those scenes in movies. The phone call. The bad news....
2 comments
Read more

Pseudo-science (like psych).

I consider myself a man of science. I try to approach problems and deal with them logically, using observations previously recorded to handle new problems. So of course my interest was piqued when someone I knew posited that men are needier and more complicated than women. An interesting theory. But to properly examine it, one must understand the concept of sexual selection and its two aspects: male competition and female choice. Which brings us to point one: men are needier [in relationships] than women. This is true. In a natural/primal setting, the males are generally love-'em-leave-'em kinds of guys. Their main objective is to reproduce as much as they can. Humans, in their infinite wisdom, have decreased the emphasis on this to the point where it has become a footnote in male purpose. Civilization dictates that, instead of finding a partner for the sole purpose of reproduction, males find females for life companionship. With the effective removal of their natur...
5 comments
Read more

I'm a geologist, not an alcoholic.

I thought I had seen people drink before. Hell, I thought that I had drank before. But, clearly, I thought wrong on both of those counts. I cannot, for the life of me, think of a reason to justify all of the drinking that transpired down there last week. There was no rhyme or reason to it, it just was. Field work just makes a man thirsty. Taking this class was easily one of the best things I've ever done. We worked hard every day out in the field. Wake up at 7, leave the beach house by 8, hit the water by 9. My first three field days were in service on the R/V Acadiana , a 58 foot vessel that towed the CHIRP fish , the air gun, and the streamer to measure all the seismic data--looking at the subsurface of the seafloor we drove over. My second ship was the R/V Itasca using the multibeam , sidescan , and grab sampler --getting seafloor surface bathymetry. They were long, exhausting days and we returned to the docks around 6 or 7 every evening. And then, drinking. So much ...
1 comment
Read more