Friends! Yesterday was Veteran’s Day and I was a medic in the Army National Guard, a very long time ago. I’m not even a veteran by law because I didn’t do enough Armying in my five years of part-time soldiering. Nonetheless, you’re welcome for my service. Now here’s a humiliating story about how little I actually did, rendered for your amusement, and, as always, with a tiny lesson about life that I hope will prevent you from being as dopey as your Free Life Coach.
It’s very common for me to be the only person in a conversation at work or with friends who a uniform. I guess that’s because I hang around mostly middle-class people, usually very lefty in politics, and those types don’t typically enlist. As a result, if I bring up being a former soldier, people get oddly impressed. I love to impress people! So for years, now and then I’d mention my time in the Army National Guard for a little fun and to make myself feel great about me.
Here’s the thing: The Army National Guard is the least amount of commitment a person can give to the military, and it doesn’t command any respect from active duty soldiers. I went to regular Army boot camp and advanced training, but after that I only trained on weekends and two weeks in the summers. I did very, very little of what full-time soldiers do. (NOTE: Once we entered a state of permanent war in the Middle East, National Guard soldiers served long, difficult, and dangerous deployments. In my time, not so much.)
At the time I joined, I was working full-time in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a year after high school with no plans for college. I fixed the springs in the seats at a movie theater. I lay on my back on the filthy floor, amid cups filled with tobacco spit and stale popcorn. My boss played ‘70s prog rock over the theater speakers, bands with names like Uriah Heep, while I pulled out exhausted greasy coils and snapped new ones into place for $3.50 an hour. It was more than the $3.35 an hour I made during the day, so it felt like a deal.
The Army offered me an enlistment bonus on a 6-year contract of $2,500. That amount was exactly what I owed on my red Ford Escort. A Freddie Kruger doll dangled from the rear-view mirror of that vehicle and I had a “Ban Apartheid” sticker on the bumper covering the “I HEART bowhunting” sticker that came with the car. I was broke with no prospects. So I signed up. I’ll save the boot camp and medic training stories for another time. Now to the embarrassing part.
Years later I was in Forest Hills, Queens, at some event for parents of kids in pre-kindergarten. I was mixing it up with professionals and I barely had a job writing ad copy part-time as a stay-at-home dad. So I was feeling insecure around men who made much more money than I did. They went to an office every day. I did not. I reached into my handy bag of ego tricks to give myself a boost. I didn’t know I was doing this, I just know it now.
I said something like, “When I was in the Army…” and told a dumb story about not sleeping enough or some other tiny hardship. The guy I was talking to, another dad, smiled a bit and said, “Oh, where were you stationed?” I mentioned that I had only been in the Army National Guard, I didn’t get too far into it. He nodded.
Then I asked him, “Did you serve?”
He had.
Where?
Fort Benning.
Oh, were you infantry?
He was.
Airborne?
Yes.
The line of questioning went like this for a bit until I teased out that this man had jumped out of an airplane into a combat zone in Grenada. Back then, having a combat infantry badge and combat jump wings was about as good as you could get. They’re like Eagle Scout badges but even fancier. The only thing I could say to preserve any dignity I had left was to own what had happened.
“So, just to be clear, I was bragging about my time in the National Guard to a parachuting combat veteran and you just let me figure it out all by myself?”
The consummate gentleman, he just chuckled. I still cringe at the memory.
But I did what I did and he did what he did, and by trying to make myself feel more than, I wound up feeling less than.
Free Life Coach Prescription:
When you compare, you despair. Don’t compare yourself to others, it’s a game that always ends in tears.
BONUS
Don’t be a showoff. It’s embarrassing later. But if you do try to be a showoff and it fails, tell someone about the humiliation, it’s good for a laugh.
Serving you, my friends, as a keyboard warrior from the comfort of my home and bragging about a few uncomfortable months in the Texas desert every Veteran’s Day,
I remain,
Your Free Life Coach,
Sean Sakamoto