Post Script To The Decade

I took it into my head to go through my paper records and start cleaning everything out that doesn't mean anything. After all, a year's worth of calendar entries may be of historical interest if one happens to be President or some such twaddle, but for us ordinary people, there usually aren't more than a couple of events per month in even a busy year that are worth keeping, even if just for ourselves. The other scrawled phone numbers, initials, and obscure instructions are just piles of banality that need to be returned to the Great Wheel for recycling.

My goal is to leave just enough for my kids and executors to feel like they have to read through and figure out what to keep without it crossing the line into being so much they just torch the whole pile and hope for the best. If I do it right, it will be a huge pain in the ass (the operative part that I'd find funny, even being dead, and the main reason to leaving anything at all) that they'll feel obligated to do.

No, don't worry, I ain't going anywhere -- I suppose I could drop dead any time between now and the distant future (Memento Mori, yeah?) but I hope not because it'll take another 10 years for me to get through the rest of it.The hoped-for post-mortem ass-paining is just a so-far unrealized aspirational goal.

The immediate upshot is that I was able to shrink a bunch of "history" from a decade down to a single small volume of stuff that is actually of any (heh) "value".

It's been years since I looked in the stuff, and what I didn't expect was that I was going to find some -- well, bad times -- in there, including at least one that was profoundly life-changing and which resulted in me privately celebrating two birthdays every year to this day.

That particular decade was "interesting" in the Chinese curse sense. ("May you live in interesting times.")

Maybe I'll tell you about the life-change event someday. Or not. Since most of what I tell you is the rankest, most obvious bullshit anyhow, it doesn't matter, I suppose. But I ain't writing the fucking thing right now.

I mean, it ain't like I'd forgotten any of it, but just reading the firsthand, as-they-happened notes from those days runs liquid ice through my veins and raises gooseflesh all over me. Reading it was exhausting in that "so drained I can barely move" sense.

So, don't hold your breath.

But I DID find THIS thing which amused me and was the original reason for the post.

It was issued in 1988. I was a Master Sergeant by then and had close on to 20 years in. I can't remember where this was issued, but those are BDUs I'm wearing (Battle Dress Uniform) instead of a "pretty" ID picture, so it was probably somewhere I'd reenlisted where being dressed up wasn't an issue. I'd have to look it up, but I ain't gonna bother.

The point is that I thought I was older than God and had the weight of the world on me. Now I look back, and wonder how I could ever have been that young.If I'd told me then how much happier I was gonna be now, I'd have laughed in my face.

Hard to believe. I'm actually looking forward to the '20s.