How much do I love pizza? I once was punished as a grown adult for a month for simply saying the word 'pizza' when I shouldn’t have. I didn't know it at the time, but the incident in a way foreshadowed the trajectory of my Coast Guard career.
To set the scene, you have to understand that at the Coast Guard Academy, all of the cadets (students) eat meals together, family style, in one large wardroom. When the officer in charge for the day enters the room, a cadet standing at a podium announces ‘wardroom, ten-hut' and everyone stands at attention. Once the officer takes their seat, they announce “carry on', and the meal begins. Such traditions of respect and order are commonplace even if questionably necessary at service academies.
And so it was one Friday, when the menu typically called for pizza and my joy anticipating said pizza ran high, that I noticed no one was at the podium to call attention. The officer had already started walking in. Seeing an unmet need, I stepped-up to the podium to pinch hit as the announcer. However, seeing a unique opportunity for fun I then impulsively decided to say “wardroom, pizza-hut.” Muffled giggles rippled through the roughly 800-person room. Not more than 15 minutes after the meal, I was handed a slip of paper saying I would be restricted from leaving the barracks on weekends for one month. It seemed the officer in charge that day did not like my joke.
Fortunately for me, the ordered barracks restriction was mitigated by a strong network of classmates who liked me and my jokes enough to look the other way during those weekends. (Not that it mattered since studies, sports, and singing dominated my weekends anyway.) It turns out those who cherish such moments of power enforcing rules are rarely actually powerful or well-connected. Just as it turns out that traditions and order and rule-following were never the end in themselves but rather part of a culture that was meant to build camaraderie and trust and an ecosystem of growth.
If you think this experience tampered my characteristic inclinations or love of pizza, I am proud to say you are wrong. But if you think such inclinations would also make long-term military service unlikely, I must admit you are partially right. As it turns out you can promote and serve about 20 years as a military officer without subverting these cherished tendencies. That said, the upper echelons do seem reserved for those who do not have, and a few who successfully subvert, more impulsive and cheerful tendencies. For the rest of us, that built camaraderie and that network of classmates/friends will serve well and for far longer than any career or rule book because of stories like this.
Carry-out…I mean, Carry On!
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