SOME THINGS IN LIFE you do willingly. Other things you enter kicking and screaming. And then there's the Air Force.

Let me say right out that it was never my intent to volunteer for the military. Thinking back to when I was a teenager, I can't exactly say what my life's plan was, but it didn't include military service.

So what happened? I'd like to think that I was duped into it by my brother, Tim. However, the truth is, I went and signed up because my mommy told me to. That's right: My mommy told me to. How on earth did this happen?

Basically, the story goes something like this:

It was 1976 – the year of the bicentennial. America's 200th birthday party. Red, white and blue. Tim decided that he wanted to be a military policemen. I've yet to ask him why.

So he goes down to speak with the recruiter in McKeesport – Staff Sgt. Floyd Ramsey – to discuss enlisting. Because we always did things together, I went with him. We both listened to his little spiel, and it sounded OK. Not for me, I thought. I don't know what I'll be doing, but sure as hell, it won't be the Air Force.

A few weeks or a few months later, we're at the dinner table, and Tim says that he's going to sign up for the Air Force. My mother immediately jumps in and says directly to me, "Well, you might as well go and sign up too, because if you think you're going to be sitting around here like some kind of lounge lizard, you've got another thing coming."

We're eating soup. Some drips out of my mouth and down my chin. Inside my head, I'm dumbfounded. Did she just tell me to go sign up for the Air Force?

That couldn't possibly be what she said. I looked up, and she's still looking at me, for some kind of reaction. I had plans: Relax for the summer, maybe pick up a part-time job, maybe work down at the steel mill, float through life, be like the people on my paper route. Gone – in an instant. Wiped right off the board by Mary Elek.

And so, now everyone was half-looking at me, waiting for me to say something. I opened my mouth, and out fell stupid. A thousand points of dumbass. Pure unadulterated idiocy. Here was my brilliant reply:

"Uh, OK."

That was the best response I could muster. Nearly 12 years of public education (13, including kindergarten ... but maybe they shouldn't count kindergarten, because that's mostly fingerpainting, pissing your pants, eating snacks and taking naps). So, nearly 12 years of public education, and the only thing I managed to utter is, "Uh, OK."

I was thinking that it was one of dumbest things I'd said to date. (About four months later in Basic Training, I proved myself wrong by saying something even dumber to the Big Bad Training Instructor: "I don't know, sir.")

The next week, I went down and took that stupid ASVAB test, scored high, set my hopes on some job in electronics or intelligence and still ended up a cop, guarding the planes and fencelines against an unknown enemy.

Stupid but true. I ended up in the Air Force because my mommy told me to go. I feel like Elvis.
 

 
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