Lt. Whong?
Friday, June 6th, 2008First of all, thanks to those who commented on the last post to let me know that you still read this. It means more than you think.
Today I went to Camp Fretterd to get a new military ID card. The microchip mysteriously fell off of my ID sometime last month, making it difficult or impossible to access my military email and my Army-provided laptop.
So, I am sitting at the PSB, getting my picture taken, and waiting for my brand new card to be issued… A Sergeant walks in and starts chatting with the soldier who is processing my new ID. She shows the Sergeant the ID card and says “Look, his chip fell out. Have you ever seen anything like that before?” He says, “Sir, you’re being to rough with that ID card. It’s from running all those missions in Iraq.” I asked him how he knew I’d been to Iraq, and he said, “Aren’t you the LT. who was blogging when you were over there?”
I was kind of blown away by that, as I’d never met this soldier before, and he recognized my face and name from an ID card and tied it into a blog that I stopped writing 2 years ago. I shook his hand and thanked him for reading it, and he said it was great to see what was going on over there… it helped to keep the rumor mill under control. I admitted that most of the time I had to bite my tongue to keep it politically correct, but I was still happy to let the world know what I was doing.
It kind of put things into perspective. 2 years is a long time. I wonder if after 2 more years if I’ll still feel the same way I do right now about things. It seems at every point in life when you think you’ve got it all figured out, a little bit of time and a little bit of hindsight will convince you that you were nuts. (much like looking through your high school yearbook and seeing what was fashionable… except with your brain) I guess it’s indicative of the constant changes we go through, which I suppose is a good thing because it means we’re growing.
-C