My Aim Is True

So something happened today that kind of made me depressed. I was at Starbucks, getting a refill of iced tea, when I was approached by the elderly gentleman at the counter in front of me. There were two of them and a lady who I assume was the wife of one, and they said hello and asked how my day was going, just generally being polite. Then one of them noticed my shirt, it was my Top Gun shirt that says “Wingman” on the back. He asked me if served in the military, and I said no, and the other asked me why I had not. Now they were in no way being impolite, and they were very friendly, so I took no offense, but I had never been asked this before.

I politely explained that I could not due to medical reasons and without elaborating
I explained that I could not get a waiver. This is all true. They both stated that they were surprised that I could not get a waiver and I stated I was as well, but there was nothing that I could do about it. We then continued to talk about military and the weather for a couple of minutes while we were waiting for our drinks. Once drinks were served, they politely said have a goodnight and take it easy and I responded the same, and then we parted ways.

The thing about this that depressed me was that I had realized something that I had previously forgot. I wanted to serve. Now I know that this may sound weird as anybody that knows me knows I am not the military type, but I really did want to serve. If I could, I would probably still be in right now. What made it worse is that these were two old men, and they were men in every sense of the word. They served their country in World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, and managed to still marry the only girl they ever loved and make a life out of everything after the military. I can only imagine that teenagers nowadays, as a whole, must look like a bunch of pansies with their eye liner and their cars daddy bought them. Kids today couldn’t survive a day in the life these old timers led and they did it with pride. And for some reason, that made me really sad as I could never measure up to that.

-B
Alison, my aim is true