Monday, August 6, 2007

It's How Things Are Done

It was very crowded at brunch this morning. I went to the very back of the line and one of the soldiers asked me, "You couldn't get in the short line?" I said, "Well, it's all backed up and I didn't feel it was appropriate for me to butt ahead of all of you." (The short-line thing has made me uncomfortable since we've been here.) He smiled and said, "Ma'am, we would do it to you." A few soldiers around him said, "That's true," and nodded. He advised me to go back up to where the lines merge. "It's how things are done." Interesting. I guess my job here is to get over my polite never-butt-in-front-of-anyone attitude.

Wee Laddie took a nice, long nap today (about 2.5 hrs) so we were way late on lunch. (Don’t misunderstand that: It matters not one iota about the late lunch… I was thrilled by the long nap! I’m just talking.) We went to the bowling alley for early dinner instead. It was okay. I wish it weren't so expensive to eat out on the economy... I am really getting sick of these lame places that we have to choose from on the base.

Wee Laddie's leg was feeing better all day today, so of course he was jumping all around as usual.

2 comments:

DJsShally said...

so, what's the short line?

Anonymous said...

I'll post this in case anyone else wonders:

There's a separate line (at one of the mess halls) where the single soldiers pay, and another where soldiers with families and people like us pay. Our line is almost always much shorter than the single soldiers' line.

Often we'll just go right up to pay, passing 20 or so soldiers who are waiting in their line. It just feels wrong to me.