Colonel Voice

My Lunch Date Yesterday
More than Ready for her Close-up

Yesterday was another day of high adventure with my Favorite Panamanian. I casually asked the other day when her military ID card was set to expire only to discover that date was next Tuesday. She will conveniently be in Virginia starting on Sunday so a quick reaction drill was required. Civilians don’t realize the importance of the card which by itself is minor. The key issue is being current in the DEERS system which controls everything from pay to medical benefits, so a fairly big deal.

The Same Could be Said About a Certain Granddaughter

In the past we’ve gone down to the Naval Base in Newport, Rhode Island since it’s an active duty base and also offers my wife access to a good sized PX. That wasn’t possible yesterday, the only day left on our schedule. I checked online and found that the defunct Fort Devens still had some vestigial reserve military elements, amongst which was an ID card section. Not that I needed any reminders but driving onto Fort Devens was another indication of how old I’m getting. I have a lot of good memories from making my first ever household goods shipment from there to chasing recalcitrant ROTC cadets around as a Captain. I found the former base consumed by major civilian companies which have re-purposed most of the base and I struggled to find anything remotely familiar. The Army enclave was a small fenced in collection of buildings manned by a very self-important civilian rent-a-cop gate guard. A question for the ages why does the smaller the installation increase the self-importance of these jack-os proportionally. He eventually bequeathed us entrance and we found the small ID card office. I was a little shaken when I saw a hand written note that the office was closing at 1pm but that still gave us a couple hours if I didn’t count lunch (which I wasn’t prepared to).

I was directed to a table which had a sign saying “if there is no clipboard here then I don’t have time for anybody else”. There was no clipboard. My wife asked me why I was so pissed after turning away. I made eye contact with the civilian clerk and informed him we had a situation. He meekly surrendered the clipboard saying he might not be able to fit us in before he had to leave “for training”. I’d been in the Army long enough to know what Friday afternoon mandatory training encompassed. I told him I was confident he’d be able to fit us in. We had to wait an hour but he got us and a number of other people in that came in after we did. The clerk turned out to be a good guy if a little under-confident in his abilities. As I was leaving one of the other people waiting thanked me for speaking up. My wife commented that she was glad to see I hadn’t lost what she called my “Colonel Voice” which is apparently what I’d used in talking with the clerk.

My wife hadn’t eaten breakfast despite my caution not to forget when I first went to work in the morning. The time between then and when I picked her up was spent preparing for her close-up. She takes ID card pictures a lot more seriously than I do. Despite her herculean efforts she was still disappointed in the result. I wisely chose to disagree with her since I honestly thought/think she looked great. Since I had to get back to work but was dealing with a famished spouse we pulled off the road into Leominster for lunch. I’ve driven by Leominster millions of times but never stopped in there. After some minor exploration we found a grill that offered outside seating and had an enjoyable lunch together. We’ve both been charging around so much lately that this was the first time we’d been able to sit down with just each other in a while.  We followed that up with another date later in the day as she caught the tail end of First Friday celebrations. A good, if hurried day.