The sun was low enough to allow for some cooler air to flow among the bamboo and cypress jammed jungle around me. Low enough to allow the mosquitoes to begin to form their more than annoying small clouds, as if they possessed group minds in search of evil-conceived targets of evening opportunity. I rubbed the never-ending supply of repellent I carried all over my exposed parts, still trying to get used to the strange smell. It was like my freshman year in college when I learned to accommodate the lousy taste of beer before coming to like it. Maybe the repellent would work that way, too.
“Chickenman” played on Fusner’s small radio. Chickenman had boarded a jet liner in mid-air on his way to Minneapolis to be the guest speaker at a chicken and egg convention. I didn’t find the plot funny except for the part where Chickenman presents his Chickenman identity card to the stewardess to get her to let him onboard.
“What kind of super hero shows an identity card?” I asked absently of Fusner, sitting right next to me.
Personally I would rather see it in one book.
Thanks for your input, Richard.
Glad you made it HOME ALIVE…so glad you are still with Mary. Tough Times make Tough People…So glad you both hung in there…Semper fi, ONWARD !!!
Thank you Kay. As always you are a most wonderful person and quite a judge of character and intellect…well, except
for that Donald thing….
Semper fi,
Jim
“Compartmentalize”. I hadn’t thought of that word for nearly 5 decades, but that was one of the real buzz words at TBS. Take one thing at a time. Deal with it. Go to the next thing. Deal with it. Don’t mix up the items in one compartment with another compartment or you lose focus and it’s all fucked up. In your situation on the Fifth Night, that advice/teaching would have been as useless as tits on a boar.
Thanks for your feedback on my comments. It means a lot.
SF,
Farmer John
John, do you remember the “what now lieutenant?” sessions? God, I thought later on the hospital about those and how funny it would have been
to present my company situation at one of those! I loved TBS training but found most of it almost useless in the Nam. Nothing with the Marines under my command worked the way they trained me for. I came to improvise and accommodate but in ways they would not let me go back and teach or talk about.
I got sent to a civil affairs group at Camp Pendleton to await medical discharge. I was given a private office out in the boonies
with no staff and no associates. Thanks for writing about how some of your experience dovetailed with my own. I so understand Marines coming home now.
I’d make a good counselor but would never be allowed to be that either!
Semper fi,
Jim