So I'll leave the travel tales (Lantern Festival this weekend- could make for some good stories) and stick to militaryness for the moment. While adjusting to military wifery life has been a process, one of the things that still strikes me as bizzare is the salute.
From wikihow.com
If you were playing charades and trying to get someone to guess "military" or any derivation thereof, most likely you would salute. While that's about all I knew before marrying into the service, more has become apparent as I've spent time on various installations. For one, the distinction between enlisted service members (soldiers, sailors, guardsmen, airmen) and officers is that usually that officers have gone to college and completed an officer training camp/school. One thing that continues to blow my mind is that the highest ranking enlisted soldier will hypothetically never outrank even the officer who just graduated and joined last month. And when it comes to saluting, the lower-ranking person must always (when appropriate) salute the higher-ranking person, or be viewed as a terribly disrespectful and possibly even insubordinate soldier/sailor/airmen/guardsmen. (Man, those generic terms are gender-unfriendly)
My hubs is a lawyer therefore an officer, and during his training many of his trainers were enlisted members who would both get in his face during the daily 6 mile run and still call him "sir." What a weird parallel universe. I really respect that my hubs (and many others I've met) stay humble to folks who have been in service longer than him regardless of enlisted/officer status. However, military-wide the salute remains to remind of rank regardless of experience, job performance or anything else.
Our first week on base I nearly giggled when a passing soldier saluted my husband as we walked to lunch together. This became a problem, as most people were in uniform (in civilian clothes you normally don't have to salute) and everyone we passed either saluted him (lower ranking) or he had to salute (higher ranking). As unobtrusive as the guy I married is, it was hilarious to me that every few seconds we had to stop our conversation for this rather archaic uber-masculine gesture of demonstrating pecking order.
Even better was the morning when went on base for our driving test. We were running a bit behind, and to ensure we didn't get locked out of the exam room, we began running (me none to gracefully in my slip-on shoes and huge bag flailing about) toward the vicinity. As we approached the correct building, a taxi full of young men in uniform pulled up and began to pile out, laughing and joking, obviously on their way to the same exam. The hubs asked one of them if they knew which room the driving test was given in. One chuckling sandy-haired young man wobbled out of the cab as the others pushed out, then caught sight of my husband and I. He suddenly snapped violently upright, suddenly solemn, saluted and responded emphatically, "Negative, sir!" Never have I seen such an instant demeanor change, made even more ridiculous by our sweaty and bedraggled state. On the way out of the same exam we crossed paths with a bicycling soldier, who stopped to shift his weight and saluted the hubs as he rolled by- which led to a full out gut-busting laugh after he had passed (oh, I wish I had a picture- balanced on bike and saluting is so funny to witness).It is most unfortunate that this very serious sign of solidarity and respect still makes me giggle, but I'm coming to respect it more. Although stories of junior officers demanding of more experienced enlisted soldiers, "Are we not saluting officers today?" make my skin crawl, I'm even coming to find it normal. It's like a wave from passing bus drivers, a bow in Asian culture- it's a sign of acknowledgment and support, even if it does venture on an insiders-club secret handshake. And the good news is that unless I get a crazy streak and decide to join up, I'll never have to.
Vocab of the day:
Korean: 인사 (een-sah)= salute *All translations courtesy of BabelFish. I also blame them for funny/horrifying/wonderful mistranslations=)
Military: SALUTE (not the gesture, but an acronym)= Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time and Equipment.
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