We're an odd pair, the driver - Medina - and I. He's a young kid, not even 20, with a rough upbringing in the city. At 28, I'm one of the oldest in the company, raised in small town Pennsylvania. He's the guide-on bearer - a PT stud, disciplined and competent, a solid infantryman. I'm lucky when I don't trip over my own two feet and the stupidest smart guy anyone knows. The street and the Army - that's what he knows - carrying a wealth of common sense and a work ethic that helps make him a natural fit for the military life. I'm the bookworm, smart with words and facts and not so much with the easy tasks.
Yet here we are, day after day, hour after hour, and though we come from two very different places, two very dissimilar backgrounds, we find much in common as we talk politics, policy, girls, gossip, and more, secrets and stories bridging the initial divide.
If he'd grown up like most people reading this, he'd be enjoying college right now and doing quite well for himself. So we're going to work on that. In the meantime, he's going to take me to the gym and work on this faux-intellectual's flabbiness.
It's an odd match. But it works. And it's the ability of the military to bring together individuals of disparate views and origins that I still find incredibly compelling and uplifting.
1 comment:
It truly is amazing to meet a cross-section of our society away from the trivialities of normal life.
That's why I loved jury duty.
Didn't need to get shot at or nothin. just fyi.
Post a Comment