What Ever Happened To Rob

Rob and I were still friends and saw each other on occasion --as often as he came around, that is. We had not seen each other in a little while mostly due to his crazy work schedule but one particular day as he was getting off from work I happened to be walking by the Mess Hall. I stopped to talk to him. He commented we had not really been talking. I didn't see it as me ignoring him but I gathered from the conversation he thought that. I tried to explain to him he just had not been around (and I strongly objected to going up on the male floor) and I wasn't ignoring him but he said, "No, its something else. Something is different but I don't know what or why." As soon as I said that in the distance SSG Newsome was walking across the parking lot and as he always did, he caught my attention.

Rob turned around and looked at Sergeant Newsome then looked at me and suddenly he was very quiet and almost sad. He said, "Oh that's it!" I asked him what he was talking about and he said the look on my face said it all. Still genuinely confused, I asked him what he meant and he said, "Are you kidding me? You've never looked at me like that before. Just now --when you saw Sergeant Newsome --your eyes and your face lit up."

If eyes really are windows to the soul, Rob was seeing something in me even I did not yet realize existed. It would be years later I found out that soon after that day, Rob talked to SSG Newsome and told him something like, "Man, that girl is crazy about you. You'd be a fool to let her go."

I never did talk to Rob again. He avoided me like the plague and eventually, he moved out of headquarters company but I never have forgotten him because like many people in the Army, he played a big part in changing the course of my life and readujusting some attitudes I had within me.