Between watching Donald Trump debate twice, having to hear details of his “locker room” talk (which I have never heard in any locker room), and having to talk to my teenaged son to make sure that he knows never to talk about or to women in that manner, I needed a break from politics.
I am dumbfounded that a narcissistic, pompous, bigoted, misogynistic, bullying, braying ass is actually the nominee of a major party. Between his debate performances and his attitude that women are mere objects to grab, and that all men talk that way—well folks, I have hit my limit. I need to stop and hit the pause button, if only for a little while. More than a few of you are surely at the same point. So, I give you a small story from my life. Something that seemed to happen a lifetime ago, something I had not thought of in years. Maybe it can take your mind off of the nightmare this election season has become—just for a little while.
If you don’t know, music is a huge part of my life. I am not a professional musician (not by a long shot) although I play one in my living room, where I jam on guitar with my son. For as long as I can remember music has been integral—it has been my solace when I was sad, and a motivator when I needed it. Music can make a good mood great. Music is also pretty powerful when it comes to memories. One morning this past week on the way to work, Elton John's Sad Songs (Say So Much) came up on my playlist. I have heard this song probably a million times over the years and have never really given it a second thought—it’s one of those songs that just fades into the background. That morning, for some reason, was different. Suddenly I was transported back to September and October of 1987. I don’t know if it was because the weather reminded me of a day so long ago, if it was a smell, or something else that took me back 29 years.
The exact dates have been lost to the sands of time, but I do remember the order of events. I had just completed my second and final border tour at OP Alpha in Germany. Thirty days with the same thirty-some odd guys, doing the same thing day after day. When off duty, we watched one of the same three VHS movies we had in the day room. Then, just three weeks after we got back we would be going to Campo Pond in Hanau for Bridgex (where combat engineers build every bridge type in the Army inventory over the course of one week). This was an extremely busy time of year for us as we went from border duty to exercise after exercise up until Thanksgiving.
While at OP Alpha, we had sporadic mail service. I could write four letters in seven days and they would all go into the same mailbag. Incoming mail? Well, you were lucky if you saw it. It all depended on if any one went back to Wildflecken, or if anyone from Wildflecken came to the OP. More often than not, we went without mail. Since this was during a time where there was no Internet, no email, no text messages, or mobile phones, there was only one way to know what was going on at home: old-fashioned letters. That was your lifeline, especially when you served overseas.
One day after returning from OP Alpha, I received a letter. It was in the familiar pink envelope that I looked forward to receiving twice a week. While I expected there to be eight or nine of them, there was only one. As I had been on the border for a month, I had not seen any mail save for a letter from selective service demanding that I go to the nearest post office and register, even though I was in the Army and serving in Germany. "H," my high school sweetheart, normally wrote a couple times a week, but I wasn’t worried that I had not heard from her in a month. After all, getting any mail at OP Alpha was a feat in and of itself. But I did wonder why, after a month, there was only one letter.
It was postmarked a day after we left for the border. I opened the letter and began reading it. You hear stories about guys getting "Dear John" letters in the service—hell, we sang cadence songs about Jody back home stealing your girl. But you never think it will happen to you. You think it only happens in the movies, or to some faceless, nameless guy in another company in the battalion. “H” had met someone else, and she had been seeing him for a couple of months.
Our “song” was Elton John’s I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues. When you see the video, you’ll understand why: it fit our situation perfectly. I was be off in the Army, and she was home waiting for me (I guess we both missed the part in the video where the young woman is kissing another guy on the dance floor). I would not be getting the fairytale ending portrayed in the video that December, when I came home on leave.
I had carried a photo of her in my wallet, and another above the foam pad in my helmet. I had yet another one taped inside the driver’s compartment of my M113A1 Armored Personnel Carrier. The one in my wallet was her senior photo, but the one in my helmet was my favorite: it was her posing with a dozen roses I had sent her a couple weeks after I got to Germany. The picture in the APC was of the two us in front of a fountain at East Towne Mall. I am amazed that I can, to this day, remember those details, while other details are long lost.
She was my first love, I was 4,300 miles away, and she had ripped my heart out. I was devastated. My roommate could see the moment when my heart broke. For the next two weeks I was sullen. Other than my duties and going to the mess hall, I did not leave the barracks. I would lay on my bunk, headphones on, listening to mix tape of sad songs over and over. Wildflecken's cold, dreary, rainy fall weather did not help matters.
My roommate had finally had enough of this, and he dragged me to the rec center, my protests falling on deaf ears. He said if I did not go voluntarily, that several other platoon members were going to carry me. I thought we were going for chili cheese dogs and a game of pool. But nope—they had dragged my ass to a USO show. My roommate guided me and a few other guys to a table about four rows back from the stage.
The emcee came out and introduced the show, an all-female song and dance review. I don't remember the name of the group or a single song they performed that evening. But I do recall they were good and at some point in the show all of them were in patriotic, sequined outfits. The show was entertaining. That being said, halfway through the show I was contemplating my escape—and then the unthinkable happened. One of the performers had come off the stage and into the audience and the next thing I knew, I was being pulled on stage. Through the eyes of a broken-hearted 20-year-old who was far from home, the young lady who had pulled me on stage that night was possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was an angel to me that evening.
She had me sit in a chair while she and another singer sang a song to me. I have no recollection of what the song was—I just remember sitting there, as my friends said, looking like a slack-jawed yokel. Then when that was over, I was pulled out of the chair and she danced with me to another number. Actually, she danced. I stood there like a deer in the headlights. When the dance was over she gave me a kiss on the lips, to the catcalls of a few hundred men who all of a sudden wished they were me, and sent me off stage, my mouth smeared with lipstick. To this day, I suspect that the guys I served with somehow set this up with the performers—but, I will never know for sure.
Then, as quick as it had happened, the show was over. As we walked back to the barracks, guys slapped me on the back, asked me what she was like and how cool it was to be up there, and wondered if I got her address. They told me that I looked like I was having a blast up there, or alternatively, how I looked like a deer in the headlights, or how they would have danced better than me (which would not have taken much—an involuntary twitch would have been more than what I did).
When I got back to my room, I put away the break-up songs mix tape. I smiled for the first time in a couple of weeks, and I began to move on in life. To this day, I have no idea what her name was, where she was from, or how she ended up in a USO show at the rec center in the Wildflecken Training Area. Likewise, she has no idea of what my name is, or how much that night meant to me so many years ago. I also don’t know if her pulling me out of the audience than night was a random act of chance, or some really great guys setting it up for me. Either way, it was an act of kindness I will never forget.
The moral of the story is: 1) support the USO, and 2) you never know what kind of impact an act of kindness will have—and how long it will resonate in a person’s life.