Confessions of a Military Wife (11 page)

Of course, this led to another phenomenon: Ball Babies. These bundles of joy arrive exactly nine months later. Ask a military wife when her children’s birthdays are. If it’s July, I’d avoid borrowing her gown.

THE BELLE OF THE BALL

I had a humiliating experience at my third ball. Let me explain.

I purchased my gown while Jon was deployed. At that point, I weighed about seventy pounds because I had not been eating.

Once he came home I became fat and happy again. That also meant the dress no longer fit.

So I bought an industrial strength girdle from Sears to get my “mother’s hips” into the dress. I had had some technical difficulties with the girdle earlier in the evening at Natalie’s, where I had nearly passed out trying to get it on.

In fact, it had taken two people to get me into it. How in the world did Scarlet O’Hara pick cotton in one of those straitjackets?

The girdle went from just under my breasts to the top of my knees. It cinched me in pretty tight. In fact, it was so tight that when I sat in it and farted, the farts would slide up my back, shoot out the top of the girdle, and make my hair fly off the back of my neck.

If I changed position to allow room for outgoing gas, the air would blow down the girdle between my legs. Without warning, my legs would kick out in front of me.

How was I going to pass those farts off on someone else all night? There was only a tiny hole in the crotch to allow you to pee without taking it off.

At first, I figured I would not drink anything all night. That really wasn’t feasible because it was one of the few times when I could allow myself to cut loose. In the end, I figured I would have to risk a bathroom disaster.

I could also barely breathe and kept taking shallow breaths, which left me feeling lightheaded.

Before we left home, my hair had already started to fall apart. I decided to pull it into a bun high on my head and attach one of those fake hair things that look like a nest of cute curls. I slapped a tiara on my head and was good to go. I had my weave, my girdle, and my tiara. I was ready to party!

This ball fell between deployments. Jon had just returned from Iraq and we were gearing up mentally for his next deployment in two months. There was a lot weighing on our minds, but we kept smiles on our faces. I started to drink and it didn’t take long before I was feeling wild.

What happened next may not come as a surprise to you. Let’s just blame the girdle. It squeezed all the sense right out of me.

I had not met Jon’s new company commander, Captain Rodriquez. All that my husband had told me about him was he was very big and very quiet. My husband is a man of few words himself, so I had to push for more details. I needed to know what he looked like, so I wouldn’t act like a total idiot in front of my husband’s CO.

Jon paused and finally replied, “He looks like a big black Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

That’s all I needed. He sounded good to me, real good, in fact. Arnold had been my total teen heart throb.

I was cutting jokes and telling some silly stories to a captive audience of single Grunts when Jon asked me to come with him to meet his CO.

I put my game face on, but it was too late. There was a large handsome man with a huge smile, great dimples—sexy-looking and baldheaded. And he had the most gorgeous, petite woman on his arm. Her black hair went down to her butt. She looked like a Hawaiian Tropics model.

I started in. “Oh my God, my husband was right! He said you looked just like a big Black Arnold Schwarzenegger and you do! Look at you two! Stop everything! Give me the camera!”

I told his wife to come and stand by me to look at our two men. I went on and on about how handsome they were and how they should do a calendar together.

She was laughing. He was laughing.

I asked her if she “Bunco-ed” and she said she did. She lived near Christa, so I assured her she would be attending the next party.

Meet and greet accomplished. I thought I was so cute and charming.

Later that night, Jon and I tried dancing. We had taken a few swing lessons and thought we were “hot to trot.”

By that time, however, we were both tipsy. To make matters even more interesting, I had not eaten. I could barely breathe or move because of my girdle.

The next thing I know, Jon shoots me under his arm knocking off my nest of fake curls.

I screamed, “My weave, my weave!” as it flew through the air and landed on the ground. I was on my hands and knees crawling around looking for my weave when I found it next to Captain Rodriquez’s shoe.

I jumped up and said, “My weave got snatched off. I gotta go to the bathroom.”

And I took off.

The next morning I was horrified to realize I had made a total fool of myself in front of my husband’s CO and his wife.

Then I started thinking that Rodriquez is not an African American name. It’s Spanish in origin. I had made comments about this man’s ethnicity, but what if he was not black? My husband had been born and raised in Idaho and didn’t see a black person until he was in college!

Why had I listened to him? I had been raised in the South and knew black people. In fact, a black woman had taken care of me until I was 12.

I cried all morning.

Clearly, the Rodriquez family thought I was a freak and a racist. Or that I was a Southern country bumpkin who had never met a Latino, Puerto Rican, or Mexican, and so thought anyone with tan or dark skin was black.

I bawled all weekend. I could not believe I had screamed in front of this man that I had lost my weave. I made Jon promise to apologize for me when he went back to work.

Jon talked to his new CO that Monday. He said it went something like this: “Sir, may I please speak to you about something my wife is upset about. It concerns your ethnicity. She is afraid she offended you.”

Captain Rodriquez laughed in response. He said that he actually is a little bit of everything and that being African American is a big part of his heritage. He told Jon to tell me not to worry.

We ended up becoming great friends and later laughed about the incident. His wife and I still encouraged the boys to do a calendar, but they never did.

RANKISM

There is an issue in the military that can get very ugly: “rankism.” This is discrimination against someone based upon their own or their spouse’s rank.

The rank system is part of the military’s core structure, which is fine for the service men, but not so fine for the dependents.

Excessive fraternization among the ranks is just not acceptable. You don’t want to spend weekends drinking beer, cutting farts, or watching your boss and his wife get into a fight. When you do that, you can’t maintain a certain level of respect at work.

There have to be boundaries, especially when you’re talking about leadership roles in life and death decisions.

However, some dependents take this to mean they have a license to act like they are better than others. Some dependents think their husband’s rank means they do not have to be accountable for their actions.

Neighborhoods on base are divided up by rank. As a result, certain people always socialize together. Clubs are also set up by rank to avoid fraternization.

And yet, the tension about rank between dependents goes both ways.

Del Mar housing included Navy and Marines living on the same base. At that time we had Warrant Officers, 1st and 2nd Lieutenants, Captains, Navy Captains, and one Marine Corps Colonel (who had the house with the best view).

I had already experienced serious grief from other wives when we were assigned a higher ranking house, but the neighborhood was about to be turned on its heels again.

There were a slew of Captains who were “selected” to pick up Major within the next eighteen months. These families were still living in the smaller town homes.

You-know-what hit the fan when word came in that Staff NCOs would be moving into the neighborhood.

I could have cared less, but a slew of those higher ranking officer families that were due any minute to pick up higher rank threw a royal fit. They refused to live in the same neighborhood as enlisted families.

I thought this was “rankism” at its worst.

In the end, a handful of families moved out of the neighborhood. They “pulled rank” with the housing office and found themselves in the four bedroom, large backyard housing in Field Grade neighborhood next door to all the Colonels.

Why would you want to live next to a Colonel? No offense, but you could never have any fun.

I think the way some of those ladies went around the neighborhood gossiping, “Did you hear? The enlisted are moving in!” was disgusting. They should have been ashamed of themselves.

If they qualified for bigger houses, great—more power to them. Move on up! But running around gossiping and slandering others is uncouth and so low class.

I had also been a victim of rankism (probably) while living on base.

As a Key Volunteer, I had to call wives married to all different ranks to give them updates on the battalion. There was one enlisted wife on my call list I enjoyed chatting with whenever I called. I helped her with a few things here and there whenever she called or if I saw her at functions.

The first time she saw me with Jon was at the Ball. We were laughing and talking. But when Jon walked up to me, the expression on her face changed completely.

Her husband grabbed her arm and they stopped talking and just stared at us.

After Jon introduced himself, the wife said nothing. She simply walked away. I was shocked. I asked Jon if that Marine was in his platoon, and Jon said he was not.

I slowly realized that they had walked away when they saw my husband. She no longer wanted to talk to me.

Maybe it was her husband who did not want her talking to us, or it was some irrational fear of fraternization. Maybe it was rankism. I will never know for sure.

I do know it hurt my feelings as I felt deep down that she was avoiding me because of my husband’s rank.

Another run-in had to do with an officer’s wife and an enlisted wife. I had injured my back and could not get a doctor’s appointment. After two days of unbearable pain, I finally went to the ER.

Half of our doctors had been deployed to Germany. Add a heaping spoonful of moms, who were freaking out over their child’s every sneeze, which resulted in a trip to the hospital. Finish this fine mess up with a dash of retired vets arriving by ambulance every thirty minutes, and you have won yourself a fifteen-hour wait in the ER.

I made friends as I lay on the floor of the waiting room. We bonded over the treatment and long wait. Some had been there before me; many others arrived after. It appeared to me as if no one in the waiting room was being admitted.

After hour number ten—about two in the morning—a few of us went looking for snacks.

Someone said something that shocked me: “You know, they are only seeing officers and officer’s wives. They check your rank.”

I knew for a fact this was not true. I realized this person and some of the others were enlisted because they had been talking about their neighborhoods. They went on to complain about the special treatment officer wives get all over base—from the hospital to the commissary.

I guess one of them saw the dazed look on my face and asked how long I had been waiting. When I told them, they all gasped. It had been at least seven hours longer than them!

“Yeah,” I answered, “and my husband is an officer! Can you believe they have made me wait so long?”

They all stopped and stared at me. They were sooooo embarrassed.

I changed the subject as we headed back to the waiting room. As we continued to chat, I acted like I was not even bothered by what they had said. But not a one apologized to me.

I should also add they were all seen before me, including the wives who came in later. The few who had made those nasty comments earlier looked ashamed as they left the ER before I had even laid eyes on a doctor.

Maybe God had me wait so long so those ladies could see that they were wrong. I don’t know, but I hope that they remember that night before they spout off about rankism.

For all the rivalry between Grunts and Pogues, we had some of our wildest parties with Pogues.

One time Beenie and Lloyd asked us to join them at a hot tub party at their house along with USMC lawyers (Pogues) and their wives. We were the only Grunt family.

Marines are a breed of their own, and I personally think the craziest of all the military. They love to party and drink beer. We knew enough to pack an overnight bag. Nobody would be driving home.

The guys were playing horseshoes and Beenie and I were enjoying a wine cooler when I was introduced to Beenie’s four-pound poodle.

I started crying because in our move across country I had left both of my poodles with my mother, as Jon put it, “until further notice.”

This tiny black poodle was all character. In fact, Willy smoked cigarettes! Beenie would take a drag and when she put her hand down, the dog would sneak up behind her, bite the filter, and run off into the yard with it in his mouth! You should have seen a bunch of Marines chasing a poodle around trying to get the cigarette away from him!

The barbecue was great. Lloyd prides himself on his grill specialties. In fact, you just might see him on the Food Network one day.

At sunset, it was time to fire up the hot tub. Beenie and Lloyd decided because it was a “hot tub” party that we should play 70s R&B mixed with today’s best rap. We cranked up the volume and popped the tops on the appropriate beverages.

Some Pogues left after the hot dogs and hamburgers just as the girls put on their bikinis and the first rap song started blaring. The rest of us—four couples—were in it for the long haul.

Now, Lloyd is the most non-Poguey Pogue and my husband is the most non-Grunty Grunt you will ever meet. Neither one of these guys really lives up to the stereotypes associated with their nicknames. In fact, Lloyd is really tough and my husband is really smart.

Still, there was this silent competition that had started with the infamous puggle sticks battle. I am not even sure if my husband was participating in this competition or if he was just a bad drunk. But he and Lloyd were in rare form. We were drinking Alize, which tastes like liquid sugar and goes down like Kool-Aid.