My recent birthday fling brought back a few memories of some 30 years ago. The superficial peer-worshiping attitudes and their grand expectations of people like me. Sure, I was the best in my field but for quite different reasons, like most underdogs of the military community, hoping one day to reconnect with all that was lost in the political no-zone. All that braggery and posturing they called camaraderie, proved little more than a bad hangover. Always trying to feed me what I couldn’t eat, and all their lack of communication skills without massive amounts of alcohol. Always ruining every effort I tried to decently celebrate. They didn’t think that mindless hierarchy would ever come to an end, and when it did, they just couldn’t get over it. It was hell trying to lose that lot amid my father’s desperation to sustain it, and when he died, they actually thought I should carry on that legacy, as if I should have nothing better to do. After all these years of being coerced into the surrogacy of a brain damaged mother, I wasn’t about to take over that role either...and that is where the story ended, once and for all, thank fuck.
