Ahh, Youth!
Look, I'm not that old. Well at least I don't feel that old. I watch images of our soldiers in Iraq, and I wonder what could have been. I've got a pretty interesting resume, I think, and I came real close to adding "Naval Aviator" to the list. It just wasn't meant to be, I guess.
Certainly the most enjoyable, the most entertaining and the most dangerous thing I ever got paid to do was Water-Skiing for a living at Disney. I can't show or tell what they made me wear (classified information), but I feel comfortable telling you that I often felt really goofy doing what I did. I grew up on a lake in Central Florida (tough life), learned to water ski, then one day I auditioned for a ski job at Disney. I had never until that morning worn a set of trick skis. As I recall, my friend Eric and I rented a ski-boat and driver at Disney's Conteporary Resort, (I forget the driver's name, but we were all about 21, in great shape and eager to impress everybody we knew, including her). Eric had also thoughtfully remebered to bring Raw Oysters to much on while we practiced.
Trick skis are interesting things. I remember seeing guys ski barefoot, and one person I remember from a ski party my dad took me to for his boss, who wore these little things they called "ski shoes" which were little more than bigfoot-print sized boards with ski bindings attached to them. While trick skis are much bigger than my bare-feet and those "ski-skoes", they are, in my humble opinion, one of those inventions designed by a demented, angry person, with designs on making life interesting and difficult for many people he has never, and may never meet. Trick skis are large, like snowboards, they have sharp edges, and there are generally two of them in use at one time.
Just as an insertion, I learned that skiing is fun when you're with your friends, you have a boat and a job which allows you to buy gas for the boat, and you can have your friend swing you around to the beach whenever your arms get tired. When someone is paying you to ski for them, it turns out that things get a bit more difficult. It's about a mile across Disney's Seven Seas Lagoon from the Ticket and Transportation Center Ferry landing over to the Magic Kingdom Ferry landing. A typical ski run consisted of taking off from the dock or beach near the departing Ferry Boat, loaded with guests of the Park on their way to an exciting day of hot, steamy weather, stifling crowds and expensive food and beverage concessions. The ferry boat traveled more or less straight across the lake. The ski boat which was much faster than the ferry boat did not. It would do figure-eights around behind the ferry, along one side, from back to front, then turn out, go behind the ferry and cruise up the other side. We did about 6-8 of those on a shift, about 3 miles total each run.
What's all this got to do with the War in Iraq, you ask? I'm gettin to it - just be patient!
So there we were. Army age guys in a boat in Florida working on their tans most of the day. All fun? Well NO! I have had difficult jobs. I have had stressful jobs. I have had cool, creative jobs. But never have I had a job where I had to work harder, with more responsibility for the LIVES of other people every day. Of course, most of that responsibility came from holding back the urge to run over stupid tourists and their kids driving all those little water-sprite boats all over the lakes!
K, I'm almost to my point.
I've been watching the troops on TV every night until about 2am, and I am more than impressed with everything I see. I tried to join the military when I was going to college. Way above average on the written qualifiers, perfect vision, flight school already underway through the university, and I tried to get in as a Naval Aviator. Flunked my physical. Then became a pro water skier - go figure.
Anyway, having missed the opportunity to serve as I wanted, I now must serve by supporting our troops, all the way up the chain of command. My only personal experience in understanding military discipline is in remembering what we went through daily out of professional pride. None of the operation procedures required any of us to do anything other than provide a good show to the guests of the theme parks. We did that, of course. We went way beyond that, of course. What we realized, and preached to each other, and practiced daily was out of fear of dying. We all knew that if you miscalculated a cut while you were close to the back of the ferry boat, that you could get sucked down under the ferry boat, and get chopped to pieces by the props, like the turtles and floating souvenirs we saw regularly. We knew that if we fell and let go of the ski rope, that we could get run over by a tourist in a water-sprite. We also knew that falling while doing a trick at speed could hurt bad, and someone who is hurt and in the water is in trouble and needs attention fast. It only happened to me once, but I was grateful for the practice we had given each other in driving the boat and pulling heavy, wet people into a skiboat without their help.
What drove us to perform at the level we did was not a paycheck, but rather professional dedication to each other and the trust our employer had in each of us. We not only had a job to do, you see, we had an image to protect. We had nothing to do with establishing that corporate image, but we had everything to do with maintaining it.
As I look each evening at the events occurring halfway around the world, I am all the more impressed that men and women my age and younger are devoting themselves to their assigned tasks with courage and professionalism. I have the feeling that in no other environment than the free-est society ever to have existed, can a person have the personal conviction to complete a task not because it is expected of him or her, but because it needs to be done, and you are the person in the right place and time to do it. Are any of the troops over there doing what they are simply because they have been issued orders? Not in my book.
The professional soldiers of The United States of America have my respect because I know that not one of them is doing only what is expected of them. While I know there are moments of detachment for each of them, no doubt every person who represents all of us grateful homebodies, every one of them is going way above and beyond expectations because they know they must, they know why they must, and no one has had to tell them that they must. Professionals all.
Sadly, again tonight, I'll have to listen to stories about what they did through the filters of a different type of professional, the professional journalist. And they are a different breed entirely.
Hats off to the troops and their leaders! Another day of sweat and glory, another day closer to victory.
By the way, I can barefoot.
