My bootcamp photo from 1983
This morning I was thinking about the bus ride I took to Navy Bootcamp back in 1983. Seems like a long time ago…
I joined the Navy because the poor economy made finding a job as a dental laboratory technician nearly impossible. My trade school instructors (all retired Navy dental technicians) recommended I join up and spend five years getting experience, then I could have what I needed to find a good civilian job in a lab.
Of course if you know my story, I never did get to lab school and today am in a career far removed from patient care and the military.
For the most part, my 15-year career was unremarkable. I never served aboard a ship. Never actually fought in a war. Never participated in any conflict aside from working with a few difficult bosses. Two of the four commands I served at are no longer in existence. In fact, my particular rating, the Dental Technician rating was absorbed into the Hospital Corpsman field a few years ago. When people ask what I did in the Navy, I can’t really even tell them because although DTs are now HMs, I never did any Corpsman duties (if you watch any war movies, you’ll hear injured Marines yelling “Corpsman”). In a sense, it’s almost as if my career never really existed. And, even though I’m technically “retired” from the Navy, it’s really part of a 15-year retirement program called TERA that was offered in the 1990s that gave me a reduced monthly retirement check. I can’t really even say I’m “retired” Navy.
I guess in a way it wasn’t a total waste. I completed BS and MA degrees going to college at night and on weekends. I was able to travel to Australia and live there as well as live for two years on Guam. But I have no sea stories to tell. No tales of bravery in a life or death situation. I came in after the Viet Nam War and left a few years before 9/11.
When I was stationed in Australia, one of my shipmates told me that even though he didn’t really want to go to sea, he “owed it to himself to get stationed on a ship.” I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. While certainly not a glamorous tour, at least he could proudly say he really “served” in the Navy, not sat in a sterile, clinic environment which for the most part was a civilian job done while wearing a uniform.
My point is this: when you have an opportunity to do something unusual, uncomfortable, and even somewhat dangerous, why not do it?
So the lesson for this week is merely a suggestion. Rather than do what is safe and requires less effort, why not take a risk and do the more frightening (and possibly more dangerous) thing?
Country singer Kenny Chesney sang a song in which he laments “I would have done a lot of things different.” I can relate. Before you relate, why not do something today that you WON’T regret not doing later.
Just some food for thought….