Staying Cool for Cats in July

02MondayJUL 2012

Lucked upon some tunes by Chris Difford – specifically the album “South East Side Story“ – wow. Memories flooding back in take me timewarp to the beginnings of my ‘adult’ life. San Antonio, Texas, July – hot hot heat.
First smart move I ever made was to volunteer tentavly for ‘pad cleaner’ – turned out I got to spend a bit of each day outside in the shade, and hum the tune ‘cool for cats’ while I ‘maintained an environment suitable to ensure the effectiveness of the mission oriented training of our nation’s military forces’ – see how I turned that around? Doesn’t sound a bit like I swept the concrete pad where a bunch of bewildered youth did calestenics at 4:15 in the morning before it got to hot for humans to do anything in the swelter of a Texas summer.
There was quite a bit of learning done that summer. Such as math – 30 days does not mean one month, if you count only the M-F days then 30 of them takes 6 weeks to get through. Ah. Also, that because details do matter a set of underwear can be folded into a 6 inch squares. Week after week.
I also learned to pay attention, to listen and do my best to understand the situation before asking questions – didn’t necessarily save me from an occasionaly foot-meet-mouth situation; sorry General, we were being scolded re: security badges that must be shown at all times in our work area. Your badge was no where to be seen. I learned that Generals are allowed to have a custom uniform policy – I had not known that.
Summers in Texas – turned out to be a bit of theme for my military career. Survived them all, so no sweat- right?
s.