“THREE MORE WEEKS”
by OPOVV, 2016
(Dec. 26, 2016) — “So what’s the skinny?”
“Same old.”
“I mean, really. What are we supposed to be doing?”
“We’re supposed to be doing our job.”
“Oh, that’s just great. And what is supposed to be our job?”
“You heard the man: same old.”
“I’ll try one more time, and if I don’t get satisfaction I’m going to completely reassess my position.”
“You’re a peon, got it? You’re what the totem pole sits on. You’re either first in line or last in line. You’re either on point or last in chow line, okay? You don’t have a position to reassess. You have no say; get used to it.”
“But I’m the guy who eats it first; gets it first; dies first.”
“And what’s your point?”
“My point is that there’s an equation, right? Am I right?”
“Okay, there’s an equation.”
“And I’m one of the characters in the equation. So how come I don’t count? I’m treated like a second-class citizen, aren’t I?”
“I lied: you’re not counted. You never were counted. In World War I you were sent headlong into machine-gun fire, and the generals who ordered your deaths got decorated with medals, ribbons and promotions. You got cut in two or gassed; food poisoned or drank filthy water; but mostly the generals didn’t know what they were doing so you never did have much of a chance in the first place.”
“What about Vietnam? What happened there?”
“Classic case of why generals should maybe move the pieces around the Big Board but leave the individual units alone; let the smaller pieces move by themselves. Let the Air Force decide how to take out a target and not fly the same route at the same time day after day; now wouldn’t that be a novel idea?”
“Like us leaving the base at precisely 0800 every morning?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“We’re still being picked off.”
“Three more weeks.”
“We have a few queers in our unit.”
“Three more weeks.”
“We have women on deep-water man-o`-war ships.”
“Three more weeks.’
‘We have women in combat units.”
“Three more weeks.”
“It seems as if the military has put all of its eggs in the Trump basket.”
“Yes, we have, and I say it with pride, with one heck of a lot of pride.”
“So what’s changed?”
“EVERYTHING.”