Friday Musings 06/24/2005
By Lex, on Fri – June 24, 2005
Something a little different this week: A tumbler of Woodford Reserve , based upon the kind recommendation of Bryan, who drops in from time to time while trying to stay awake while being up half the night on call. Even more generous than his recommendation (and I am exceptionally pleased with the thing itself) was the fact that he made quite a generous donation to more than pay for it.
For which I thank him kindly. (And the honor is mine, sir.)
So. What shall we talk about? It’s been a while…
Well – let me tell you about dinner last night then: The Biscuit graced us with her presence, and in fact brought home a bevy of young ladies. Although I use the term guardedly. Anyway: This combination virtually assured us of a visitation from all the local teenaged boys, and we were not at all disappointed in that regard, in their wife-beating muscle shirts and bloom of arrogant youth and good health. We shooed them off eventually, in order to make a reasonable repast – although the act of doing so nearly broke the Hobbit’s heart, so fond is she of feeding the unwashed neighborhood rabble, mere beasts that they are, and up to no good. But there is little on earth that can compare to a teenage boy when it comes to your essential ravenous gluttony, and we were sadly (some of us) unprepared for serving both the girls and the boys.
This was no choice at all. For me. Off you go then, boys. Come back in a decade or so.
We held hands around the table, and bowed our heads and gave thanks, as is our custom. One of our guests thought to make a bit of sport of that, and we smiled politely in return, not rising to the bait. ‘Tis a free country, after all, and allowing oneself to get wrought up by 14 year olds is analogous to picking fights with DU’ers *(It’s in the comments, really – starting at the beginning. H/T to Glenn again.) The Biscuit seemed a bit embarrassed for her friend, which gratified me for some strange reason.
At one point in the meal, somehow the talk turned to childhood diseases, etc. about which we no longer worry. This brought up smallpox, for one – like most kids of my generation, I got a smallpox vaccination way back in the day. I guess we declared victory and left the field not long thereafter, because kids joining the service today, and many who are in fact in their early 30’s never did so. The import of this was that in the ramp up for OIF, along with all the anthrax shots we got, those of us in theater were required to get smallpox vaccinations. Because of the threat of biological weapons, or WMD as you might say. Which we all secretly knew was a ruse, because we knew that there weren’t any WMD, and never had been, and that all those Kurdish folks in Halaba had really, really bad diets and when they claimed to have been subject to gas attacks, we all jumped to the wrong conclusion. It might have been a translation error.
So no. No WMD. But here’s the thing: We really, really wanted to go to war for some reason or another. Which none of us can remember now, but it had nothing to do with WMD, and it was a really good reason, you’ll just have to trust me on that. So we all graciously acceded to the anthrax and smallpox vaccinations as a way of furthering the ruse. My God, but we’re clever.
So. Smallpox vaccinations. If you’d never had one before, it was a simple matter of three or so scratches with the needle, a bandage and a grotesquely suppurating sore for a week or so. We were warned: Don’t touch it, for heaven’s sake. And if you do, don’t touch any mucous membranes, exposed skin, clothing items, door knobs, hatch handles, dining implements or bulkheads.
What could be simpler, on a vessel a thousand feet long and carrying 5,000 souls? All of whom had suppurating sores on their shoulders? Nothing at all to worry about. Move along.
But the really unfortunate thing was that, for those of us who had once been inoculated, our resistance was assumed to be higher. So we didn’t get the three pricks of the needle assigned to the callow youth, but rather closer to twelve or fifteen. Which is a lot more than three. A lot. It’s so much more in fact, that the average fighter pilot wants to 1) pull his shoulder back away from the medical corpsman after about six or seven hits with the needle, and 2) use that same shoulder to deliver a punch right to his nose after about ten hits. Neither of which courses of action is deemed entirely appropriate. He was just doing his job, after all. The bastard.
So, in telling this story to our assembled crowd of 14 year old females, I pushed my shirt up over me left shoulder to show the vaccination scar. I’ve been paying my dues lately at the gym, and was felt absurdly rewarded when the Biscuit said aloud, “I never realized you were so muscular.” At which point, another 14 year old girl commanded, “Flex,” which of course I did, unthinkingly. Immediately feeling more than a little foolish. Because deep inside, no matter how old we get, we never lose that part of us that’s a 14 year old boy, wearing a muscle shirt in arrogant good health, and hoping desperately to be noticed by the girl before the girl’s dad kicks us the hell out of the house.
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Charmaine sends along a link to a wonderful story * about the USS Bonefish – a submarine lost in combat in World War II, and to which Charmaine has a personal connection. It’s a lovely tribute, and you ought to give it a read.
Joe sends along this image :
As well as a link to a great deal more plane p0rn, for those so disposed – He also links to an amazing story about a partial ejection in an A-6 that I mentioned obliquely here * . Thanks Joe!
Speaking of photography, I got a nice note from Jordan in Poland. Jordan is an occasional visitor I gather, but a tremendous visual artist – his oeuvre can be found here * (when he gets back within bandwidth limits). Beautiful work.
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Well. I’ve got a long, serious, Important Post that I’ve been mulling over since, oh – two miles into my four miler this morning. That’s the lovely thing about a run, the way it clears your head. But it doesn’t really belong here, with pictures of legacy fighters and smallpox scars. So I’ll save it for later, and offer all of you my best hopes for a lovely weekend, full of every pleasure you could desire.
But not so much as you might get used to it 🙂
Cheers!
* 07-09-18 Link gone; no replacement found – Ed.