I have reached the point in life when options begin to wither away. I’ll never be the quarterback for a professional football team, or an astronaut, or a male model. Maybe once, back in the day and with the right training and commitment I could have been a contender. Now it is too late.
But there is one job that I could never have performed, even in the best years of my youth.
I could never have been an aide.
Have you ever seen what aides have to do? Aides have to know stuff. They have to remember things like names. They have to know how to get places. I know one aide – a great officer – who got lost and made his boss late for a meeting. He got fired.
One meeting. Career over.
And that’s not all. They have to understand protocol. They have to remember in what order you introduce people. “Mrs. Smith, this is Admiral Jones.” “Admiral and Mrs. Jones, this is Mrs. Smith.”
Or maybe not. I’m not sure.
They have to keep schedules. They have to know where their Admirals are at all times, and where they need to be.
They have to be interpreters.
They make airline reservations, carry luggage, and always get the worst seat. Speaking of travel, a Marine aide I know – a tobacco chewer – was flying in a helo with his General. During the flight, he realized that he needed to spit. So he leaned out and spat out of the window, but the rotor wash had created a weird vortex and the loogie just hovered in the air for a second or two, then shot back into the aircraft and landed right on the General’s uniform.
So aides also have to have good judgment.
I can’t do any of those things. So I could never be an aide – not now, not ever.
I could use one. But since I’ll never be a Flag, that won’t happen.
And that leaves me just one good option. In a few years I’ll be eligible for Medicare, and with all this health care nonsense going on, they’ll probably need to put out some new brochures to describe all the changes.
Maybe they need a male model.
