The never-ending day
In any job there are bad days and good days. While I was in the teaching and coaching sector, Monday was always awful. The last team I coached in high school was a girls basketball team, so on Monday practice the battle of getting them to focus on the task at hand rather than talk about what they did with Matt the star quarterback, followed by who broke up with whom was tedious and somewhat frustrating for a while. I learned quickly that the only way to get the girls on track was to have all of them sit down in a circle and while they stretched just to let the stories go. It was like “90210.” Sometimes things got ugly, especially when girls found out the boy who had just recently broken up with them had moved on to another girl, who just happened to be in the circle. For some time I didn’t want any kids, but after awhile I learned to understand this new generation of teens. Things haven’t changed since I left school. I thought those days were bad, but they were nothing compared to what would come further down the road in life.
In this job the bad days come and go, but when they come they come fast and last usually up to patrol long. The thing about working close to each other every day and seeing each other every day is you know who’s down and who’s up. Just listening to the radio on the truck you can hear frustration and lassitude. Sometimes there is just silence on the radio. When I am in the rear hatch on patrol, I am often told to look back and see how far back the trucks are. When I look back to see, I often see different looks on the faces. Certain days there will be a smile followed by a laugh. While you’re on the truck the most amazing conversations happen, causing time to fly by and bonding moments to evolve. The saying “What is said on the truck stays on the truck” is how friendships are built. You hear some funny stories and things you never thought people would do or say. On other occasions, you will see the straight faces of hardened, concentrated soldiers trying their hardest to keep their poise. There are other days when you will see that frustrated face. That is the face that some of us carry when we are working with the Iraqi forces who don’t want to step up to the plate and take initiative. We all know deep down that if these guys can’t get their s@#% straight we are not leaving. Granted, there are good Iraqi forces, but you have to send up a Hail Mary to get them.
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Thank you so much for your blogs, I really appreciate it. My husband is in C Co, SSG Dabel. It's nice being able to read about the experiences over there from a soldier, rather than a reporter. Keep up the hard work, we really appreciate everything each and everyone of you do.
Posted by: 5-20 Stryker Wife | 17 March 2007 at 23:59