Nowadays in the airport, you always seem to run into someone or other who is military. There are always soliders going home to visit family or shipping back to Iraq or leaving for training or switching bases. Its an interesting time.
One thing thats been proven time and time again is how ferociously patriotic Americans are! I know that I’ve had friends from other countries comment on how Americans are so into their country and so loyal. That makes me kind of proud, because I think it is true. And then to see it in action, you want to wave a flag or something. No matter what your sentiments on the state of the union or the current governmental leaders or political debaucles – deep down, being American is generally a pride point with a most Americans. Not always really in a cocky way, but in the way that Chicagoans are so loyal to the Cubs or a homeowner is proud of their rundown studio condo. You know its not necessarily the best and things may look crappy a lot of the time, but its yours and theres that sense of ownership and even history and work that’s been put into something and you insist that, because its yours, it can only get better.
So, when you walk through the airport and you see a guy in camouflage coming to step into the airport security line, and a row of people saying “please, go in front of me”; little old women giving them a rub on the arm and an “I’m praying for you” or “God bless you”; men in business suits asking them where they’ve been and where they’re going; normal everyday people just saying “thank you for what you do”… it kind of makes you well up a little and think “we are a pretty awesome place that we’d actually acknowledge that these people are doing something to keep us who we are and are willing to sacrifice without question. They may have joined for the education or the money (as small as that amount may be), but they joined and they’re doing their job, in the long run, for us.
There are bad stories about people in the military abusing their power in the places we land, but there are a million good stories of men who have saved men and women and helped pull goats out of wells and given chocolate bars to children who had never had chocolate, and helped build schools for places where education has never been a priority. Theres always bad with the good, but I choose to think that most of the guys who go over to these other countries, are fighting to give people the same chances that we have in life and to preserve dignity and humanity. How can you not want to reach out to someone that is trying to do that.
There was a time a year or so ago when I was going to visit a friend in Idaho for the weekend. I had been working in D.C. or New York or Pittsburg or someplace out east and I needed to get to Boise, so my route took me from origination, to San Francisco to Boise. The flight from where I was to San Fran was about 3 – 4 hours and it was a pretty big plane. It was one of those 2 seats, 3 seats in the middle and 2 seats on the other side. My seat was next to a military guy and so we started chatting. He had just come from Pakistan or Iraq or some such place. He was in the canine unit for bomb sniffing so he had a dog that he had brought with him because, once they train their dogs, the dogs go everywhere with them. He had flown for about 20 hours prior to that – from his origination to someplace else to someplace else to D.C. (or wherever we were) and then to San Fran. His home was in Okinawa, Japan at a base there and so he was going to have to fly from San Fran to Tokyo (which is about 6 ½ hours) and then from Tokyo to Okinawa. CRAZY! I could tell he was SO extremely tired and he was going back to his wife and kids in Okinawa and he hadn’t seen them in, I think it was 6 months, so he was excited as well. He was a tall guy and, even though we were in economy plus which gives you some extra room – it was still, I’m sure uncomfortable for him.
As he told me what he had been doing overseas and what it was like over there, I just felt so bad for him that he had come so far and had so far to go and that he had been living in the dessert in HOT HOT weather for so long. He told me about these spiders that were there that were the size of your upper torso. The bombs that had gone off and those they had prevented and the state of the people there. I admit, I got that sense of “American”!
So, I’m not saying this to toot my horn, but just to give you a sense of nothing more or less than anything else that I’ve seen or heard people do in airports around the states. By the time we landed, I knew what flight this guy was going to for Tokyo and when he was leaving (which he was really pushing it time wise) and I just felt like I wanted him to be comfortable on the way home. I almost ran to the Red Carpet Club to fix things for him.
As you know, I get points when I travel and I’ve always determined that I’m not using those points for myself, but I’m using them for other people. When I got to the Red Carpet Club I took my points, found his name and his flight and I upgraded him to first class for his Tokyo flight. Because it was overseas, it took like 35,000 points to upgrade and I admit that when I completed the transaction, I called my BFF and asked her “Am I crazy for doing that?” to which she replied “Not at all” (thank you Melissa!). I know I would do it again if that same situation presented itself. I wish I could have upgraded the dog as well…. (Can you believe they give the dogs this medication that not only makes them sleep but basically empties their bladder so they can travel for long periods. I just couldn’t believe how long that dog had been down in cargo holds.)
I guess its just amazing to me what these military guys do for “kin and country” and how its not ever a high paying job and, sure there definitely get some benefits, but it’s a hard life. Its encouraging to see people appreciate all that and to look at these people as human beings who are doing something a little more than going to work everyday.
One more story – one that I just read. It again makes me proud of being American even though you may struggle with the overall spenditure and all of it. We are definitely a country of “goodwill” when it comes to helping the needy and giving back to those who have less than us. We’ve proven that time after time.
I was just reading in the United “Hemispheres” magazine (http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/2010/04/01/to-aid-and-comfort/), about the Comfort. It’s a US Navy hospital ship called a Mercy-Class hospital ship. It’s a converted oil tanker with 1,000 hospital beds, 850 drs and nurses, 12 ORs, 4 x-ray rooms, 4 ultrasound rooms and a media set up that allows the ship to connect with specialists at home for special surgeries. They just sent the Comfort to Haiti not long after the earthquake for, originally, a 6 month stint and its now turned into an indefinite stay. They’ve helped save the lives of thousands of children and men and women and done things that the medical facilities in Haiti would not have been able to do. Its an amazing story to read and you think of the expense, but then you think of how much we have in just general life as opposed to the people in Haiti who loss the basics of life, that we probably consider to be mundane. No matter what the economy, we’re still so much richer than so many countries out there. And, long and short, again, these military men and women are doing these long stints away from their families, in this horrific situation, and they’re doing it in our name.
I think its all pretty cool and it makes me pretty proud! Just remember to give a smile or a thank you or any other little token you can to someone in military uniform. I don’t know where we’d be without them as they’ve definitely helped to shape our country!
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