Still Growing Up

I miss that little girl I described yesterday; her sense of adventure, lack of fear, imagination, creativity. Where did she go?

I came from the most non-military family imaginable. The only relatives of mine that served in the Armed Forces were distant from me, people I never really ever knew. Growing up the only thing I really knew about the Army was what I learned from the Vietnam reports I'd see on the news each night. I can recall hearing about war protests and even remember the Kent State shootings and in my young mind, equated all of that to the Army being full of bad people. You know back in the day you'd hear of young kids getting in trouble and be given a choice of jail or the military. So to me the Army was full of bad people that weren't quite bad enough for jail but not quite good enough for society.

As I grew older and came to understand that wasn't really true, I began a new train of thought about the military. I thought it was a place for people to go if they couldn't get a "real" job or weren't smart enough or have the money to go to college. I guess maybe since my parents were always trying to direct us to the path of college, I thought the order of preference was college, job, military. You know, military being your last/only option. I wish I grew up with a whole different perspective. It's not that it is what I was taught by my parents but its what I gleaned from what little I saw and heard about. I had bits and pieces of the story and I filled in the blanks. Wrongly so.

After floundering my way through high school and college and a few jobs here and there, I began to take an interest in the Army. At the time I think I did see it as my last/only option but honestly, I think that little girl that I wrote about yesterday was dying to come alive again. After years of getting in trouble for breaking things, ruining things, messing things up, repurposing things, being too loud, too fidgety, too obnoxious, too "bad" I tried to put that little girl to rest. She did me more harm than good, so it seemed.

SideBar: I don't describe my childhood as having overbearing parents that didn't allow me to have fun. I was quite a bit to handle, I understand that and I had a stubborn streak that would make Hercules himself weak as a new born baby. I did the most incredible things and my poor parents were left to clean up the mess. For example, when I was about 4 I was supposed to be taking a nap and my bedroom was in the back of our apartment right off the kitchen. The living room was towards the front of the house, down a hall. So I couldn't sleep one day and decided I wanted a vanilla shake. Of course I knew I wasn't suppose to be up but you know, I wanted a vanilla shake. In my 4 year old mind I thought a shake was mearly semi-melted ice cream and how does one melt ice cream? With heat. I was a very smart 4 year old, of course. So as my mother was down in the living room watching her "stories" as she did every afternoon, I was ever so quietly making my way through the kitchen. I gave myself a heaping of vanilla ice cream into a plastic bowl and put my ever favored Tony the Tiger spoon in the bowl. Pre microwave days, I put my plastic bowl with spoon in the oven and turned the oven on! I guess I got sleepy or impatient or whatever because I then went back to bed and drifted off into a naptime slumber only to later be awaken by my mother's very loud voice. The plastic bowl and ice cream melted and left quite a huge mess in the oven. Why on earth did I even think it was okay to use the oven? I have no idea but these were the types of things my parents had to put up with.

I know it's taking a long to time to get to the point but this all lead me to the Army and significantly impacted my life while I was in Germany and also paved a way to a certain Staff Sergeant.