19 March 2015

Perspective check

At one time in my life I was so relevant that people wanted me dead,  and they did their best to make that come to pass.

I sometimes lose my perspective on life,  and I find that thankfully someone or something usually reaches out to remind me and set me straight.

Today it was a leader I will always look up to,  and I bet he doesn't even know what he did.

He is once again, and in fact has never ceased to be, in the situation I mention above. He is a highly relevant, trained, and motivated leader. He is engaged in doing good, and making things right in all corners of the world at the behest of our great nation.

Today, as I sat in a parking lot in Denver, CO fresh into my new job at a corporate office of a telecommunications company, wondering what I was getting into, and just generally over-thinking my life choices. This man, this leader, took a moment from his day and let me know he was in fact thinking of me. He said he was thinking of 12 years ago tonight when we were under SCUD attack in Kuwait, and that he hoped I was doing well.

Wow…

The parking lot faded away…

12 years….

They were trying to kill me, him, all of us. We were relevant, alive, dashing to don our MOPP gear, then over and over running to the bunker and waiting.

Hearing the patriot battery fire nearby, then waiting…. Then BOOM…. Then waiting…. And waiting…. Using our M256A1 kits to see what we could see.

It became mundane over the next 2-3 days… so much so that my entire tent slept through one air raid siren and giant voice… never even roused. Our PL came through on her way back to her tent after the all-clear and threw our tent door open… banging loudly… and yelled “where the hell were you guys… I was worried about you” we all shot bolt upright in our racks… My mouth was moving before I could stop it…” So why didn’t you get us on the way to the bunker, why did you wait until the all-clear to get us???” She was not amused. I was not amused. There was no amusement. The door slowly slid shut. The only sound was that of the string holding the water bottle rubbing through the wooden frame…. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…. Followed by the dull, quiet thud of the plywood door as it met it’s frame. We never spoke of it again.

All of this flashed through my mind… as I sat in this rental truck… in the parking lot… where I’m so irrelevant that no one even notices me.

However, today I was reminded that at one point in my life… I was relevant, people wanted me dead,  and some people will never experience that.