DISCONNECT RESPECT STARTS EARLY

I asked for disconnect respect once.

Didn’t get it.

Instead, I gave respect to the disconnected and stood with them.

I was nineteen and joined the All Volunteer Army.

It was the most disconnected thing imagined.

You get disconnected from friends, family, and home, and rewired to follow Army rules.

You learned about doing things the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.

It was a process of separating wheat from the chaff in Army terms.

Everything isn’t a personal affront, a personal attack, even when it is.

What I learned was I didn’t have to like Lieutenant Lame or Sergeant Snappy.

But, I needed to respect the rank and uniform, if not the man.

That was a shocking disconnect. I couldn’t just ignore some jackass yelling at me?

I had to stand and take it based on some screecher’s costume?

There was extra yelling in the early days of the All Volunteer Service.

The drill sergeants yelled to show they weren’t soft, going soft, or were soft all along.

Their mission was to prove the New Army was a superior force to the Old Army.

Soldiers from the ‘Era’ learned to give disconnect respect to anyone who needs it.

Disconnect Respect Starts With Connections

The summer after freshman year I did what college kids with connections did: I went home to work in the wood veneer plant where my brother worked summers between classes, where my buddy’s dad was a foreman.

I started as a summer vacation replacement ‘college boy’ and finished gagging with bronchitis and pleurisy in the dust filled saw mill.

One summer was enough.

I felt no disconnect respect after a summer of hard work, double-shifts, and cleaning wood dryer ovens on weekends.

“Why wouldn’t you want the best paying summer job in the state all through college?”

I was too wheezy for a good answer, other than it might lure me away from college for a career of chipping on wood-pitch stalactites baked into confined spaces.

Then summer plans changed.

Not everyone saw it my way when I said I wasn’t going back to college.

Parents: If you’re not going back to school, you’re paying rent.

Me: If I’m paying rent, then I’m moving.

Parents: We think you should pay rent for the last few months. You only lived here free to save money for college.

I wrote them a check for all of the money I’d saved for college, which was an astronomical $200 tuition a quarter.

It was my bluff.

My parents would never accept my check. Come on.

Me: This ought to cover it and then some. It’s everything in my bank account. I quit the mill and joined the Army yesterday.

2

I gave the folks a good look.

My Dad showed the same face from the summer before when I told him I was hitch-hiking from Oregon to the University of Iowa to win Greco-Roman gold in the Junior National Wrestling Championships.

(Took third place to two future college national champs.)

He was stoic while I watched him fold the check and slip it into his shirt pocket.

Called my bluff with a strong poker face.

Me: I’m taking off next week. You’ll hear from me in a few years.

Mom: If that’s how long it takes to call or write, don’t bother.

Dad: Not the Marines, but at least not the Navy. You should be a medic. They’re the best people.

He’d been shot up in Korean War combat, eventually evacuated to Japan, then went AWOL after getting patched up to reconnect with his boys.

He knew medics.

(I went to Army Medic school in San Antonio’s Fort Sammy.)

A week later I limped onto the bus with a twisted knee after a beer drinking, yard wrestling, going away party.

Ask me about my visit to the knee ward in the Fort Old hospital.

Today’s Disconnect Respect

We hear about the latest technology shrinking the world even more, from airplanes to emails, but nothing has changed about walking up a hill.

Take it from the old hill climber and his new mountain dog, you want to disconnect from things when the going gets hard and you’re on hill-pace for a Personal Record.

I disconnect from my age, my health, my feet, knees, hips, and back, and flow up hill on my biggest bones and strongest muscles.

The disconnect respect I’m looking for is pain related, though I’m not here complaining.

Not after getting a new hip that’s more than road-worthy.

At just around forty-five minutes on a brisk pace my body feels locked in.

By then I’ve gone downhill and flat with the uphill and flat to get back home.

My glutes and lower abs lead the way, which avoids over-working smaller muscle groups.

The first forty-five needs a disconnect to get through it, the second forty-five feels like the miracle of life with pace, heartbeat, and respirations synched up like you could go on forever.

The discomfort of the first part is the price to pay for the rewards of the second.

Do I like it? Not always, but I love the second part enough to make it worth doing.

And that, Dear Reader, is all for today.

Unless you leave a comment that deserves more.

And it will.