I used to wanna be a SEAL...

[boogieshoes]

For long months and years now, I’ve been telling my friends in real life and online to ask me about this story some day when we’re having a beer. Since I despise beer and never drink it, it stands to reason I may never get around to telling this story. But since it’s quite a long story, and fairly entertaining at that, I thought I’d set it down in an lj entry for your perusal. So here-in is the story of the worst family vacation ever.  

This story starts mildly before summer vacation when, as is common during the time of one’s single-digit childhood, my parents asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Self-confidently, I answered, “I want to be a fighter pilot, just like Tom Cruise in Top Gun! Yeah! And I’ll be the first woman pilot, and I’ll shoot down the bad guys and rescue the good guys and be a hero! POW! POW! POW!” Yes, Top Gun had recently come out, and I had seen it on HBO while visiting my cousins in Portland. On their big screen TV. With Val Kilmer.  And Tom Cruise.  And more importantly, those amazing airplanes that turned on a dime in the middle of the sky. It was fantastic. It was awesome. I had to do it! I’d die without an F-15, really I would! 

Dad’s response to this was a calculatedly gentle busting of my bubble: “Can’t be the first woman pilot – had those back in the 1940’s. WACs. WAVEs. Have women pilots now. Fighter pilots, too.” 

See, I had a habit of doing this all the time. I wanted to be the first woman doing something – I wanted to be more than just a footnote in history; I wanted to do something important. So I was forever telling Mom and Dad I wanted to be the first woman baseball player, and Dad was telling me I couldn’t be, because they had women baseball players in the 1940s, too.
 
I pouted for a bit at the realization that I couldn’t be the first woman pilot. Alas, I was young and full of enthusiasm, and had a zillion more jobs to go through before I was over. “I know,” I said, “I’ll be in the infantry! They don’t have women infantry right now! I’ll be the first chick ground-pounder, and I’ll be great! I’ll defend my brothers to the death, and then go out and drink wildly at night! I’ll drink strawberry daiquiris every night!” 
 
“Can’t,” said Dad, patiently. “They don’t let women into combat positions, and besides, before they actually checked too closely, women were in the infantry all the time – let me tell you about Albert Cashier, of the 95^th Illinois Regiment…”
 
“Wait! Why don’t they let women into combat positions? That’s crazy!”
 
“Well, they don’t think the average woman can handle the battle stuff.”
 
I practiced my Spock eyebrow on him. “You just said there were women in battle all the time, before they began checking people’s underwear!”

“Um… It’s just policy?”
 
“Fine! Then I’ll just have to be Special Operations. Those guys don’t engage in combat, they do stealth missions!  The whole point is to avoid the enemy, while killing him!  And who needs the Army anyways? I’ll be a SEAL, I swim real well(1), and I’ll go on secret missions I can’t tell anyone about, and clandestinely(2) save the world! And then I’ll come home and drink strawberry daiquiris and party every night!”
 
“Uh, Monika…” But I’d already left in a huff. Fortunately, Dad knew when to let things lie.

 
 

 ****************************************************************************************************
 
Let’s fast forward now to high summer, which was one of those wonderfully hot, sticky summers southern Illinois is well known for. The smell of growing corn, grilled meats, and the sound of buzzing mosquitoes filled the air. And also, the sounds of people slapping at the skeeters, cursing at the little bloodsuckers, and the frantic ‘shhhch-shhhch-shhhch’ as they scratched at their poison ivy rashes every five seconds.
 
Our house at the time was a magnificent 2 story, 4 bedroom, 2-and-a-half bath Tudor-style structure nicknamed ‘the mansion’ by our neighbors. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it really was fairly big. It was also the most beautiful house in the world in my eyes. It is entirely possible this house is the source of my love of architecture, dresses, and furnishings medieval. The first time I saw this house finished, with the half-stuccoed outer walls and diamond-trellis on the windows, I was convinced of the existence of perfection. Upstairs, all three kids had their own room, and Mom and Dad had their MasterBedroom Suite. We had a Great Room that was two stories tall, which we had tall bookcases in and Mom’s piano. A formal foyer, formal dining room, kitchen, mud-room, and living room completed the first floor. And we had an unfinished half-basement(3), which was cool in summer, and great for haunted houses and stuff, because it didn’t have any windows above ground. 
 
The house itself was situated facing the street, and we had a large lawn in front framed on one side by a gracefully curving driveway that led to the 2-car garage. For some reason unknown to me still, the driveway edge on the neighbor’s side did not end at the property line – there was a little strip of grass there. Now, our lot was on a hillside, which gave the illusion that our house was both bigger than it was, and cozily nestled underneath the trees behind it (although we did have a decent-sized backyard). And I say that little strip of lawn always struck me as weird, because the driveway flattened out into this square patio thing off the garage, and the curved part began inset from the square on the neighbor’s side. 
 
So there was this little strip, with this little ‘nook’ that never really managed to grow grass at the end of it due to all the concrete, footings, and rubble that falls out of a mixer while mixing up small batches, and Mom could never figure out what to do with it. Finally, she planted a little cherry tree over there, hoping to balance the cherry trees on the other side and further up the driveway.
 
And our trip to DisneyWorld that day began with Dad rousing us all up bright and early to get into our big blue Dodge Ram, carefully backing out of the garage – and promptly running over that baby cherry tree.
 
“Uh, Dad?” I said. “I think the driveway’s a little closer to the house.”
 
“Well,” said Kirk, the middle sibling, “I think we’re off to a great start.”
 
“Hmmm,” said Tammy, my sister, and the eldest of the three of us. “I didn’t realize the sky could be so amazingly blue before the sun really came up!” 
 
TBC…

1) I did, in fact, swim very well when I was a child.  So well that when the kinder-care people told me I couldn't swim in the deep end unless I could swim to the end of the pool and back in my water-wings, I set off across the pool and was in a fine fettle when the adults prevented me from accomplishing my mission. 
2) I read a lot, even back then.  And I had an extremely extensive vocabulary for a 10 year old.
3) The first of many, many, many basements Dad has finished over the years.  One of the family in-jokes is that as soon as Dad finishes a basement, Mom and Dad move again - to a house with another unfinished basement!  I believe Dad threatened to deliberately leave the current house's basement unfinished when they first moved there, as he was entirely too weary of moving.

this lovely story continues in:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

-bs