Mulan and MOOOOlah and Stubborn Goats
More ghosts.
Matthew McConaughy was in this chick flick Hubby got me to watch once… “Failure to Launch,” a version of the problem of velcro children, with the added twist of parents actively seeking hired-help to get their adult child hitched, migrated into fatherhood, and perhaps mostly out of the blue-painted bedroom with dinosaur sheets and an awesome audio visual entertainment set up, so that the parents could transform it into a sauna or rec room.
I sometimes feel that way when people who graduated with me or after me from the Executive MBA ask me why I haven’t become a higher-paid consultant in civi land while Double Dipping with pension. As if… Late Bloomer. Not sure if it’s the frustration Kathy Bates expresses because she feels the son doesn’t want to grow up, or the annoyance Mathew McConaughy expresses because of the pressure of some imagined deadline/lifeline.
Yes. They probably make way more money. And yes, I have received job offers. Plural.
But there is so much more in the atmosphere that contributes to my decision to still don the épaulettes and beret in the morning. Some intangible and some math-based, but overall… business sense.
So all the ex-Military alumni (and maybe even the non-alumni that managed to get a a consultant gig defense contract) that graduated with me or after me doing civilian consulting contracts.. all males… all white… Maybe in some recesses of my mind I may even feel some of you groan in disbelief because this is Canada, not USA, and it’s 2018. But how many of you have experienced not-being-white or not-being-male? Sort of like how many males have ever EVER feared being raped? Can one really fear what one never has to think about? Much like the flow of water looking for a path of least resistance: if something does not really affect someone, why bother reacting? Why would the majority of white Americans (thankfully there are some) go out of their way to stand up for Browns and Blacks and Yellows and Rainbows when their “entitlements” are not affected? Why would the majority of males reduce their opportunities by opening up competition to able females? I remember how adamant and vocal the male back-up goalie of the Tampa Bay Lightning was about not wanting to share his goalie training or playing time with the only female in the NHL: Olympic gold-medalist Manon Rheaume. Jamie Fox, a very rich and successful black American actor has even stated, “What white person, no matter how poor, would ever want to be me?!!!” Insecurity breeds ugliness.
In New York, where the Statue of Liberty welcomed boat loads of immigrants (of course with the exception of the big one carrying Jews fleeing the Third Reich, which even Canada turned away) how many decades and generations before leprechauns and wops stopped killing each other? Economics… there is no longer a need to battle and kill for lucrative New York or New Jersey port jobs because port jobs are now low-paying and money is made elsewhere. It feels like the American descendants of those same once-feuding immigrant cultures now consider themselves all-American, more-American-than-Aboriginals, all-white and in opposition to the wave of immigrants now fleeing oppression and economic uncertainty: from Mexico, Central America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia…
And except for Hasidic/ultra-orthodox… with hundreds of years of migration and intermarriage, how did the Germans differentiate a white German Christian from a white German Jew in the early and mid-20th Century? They all spoke German and they were all born in Germany… Just a bunch of insecure people upset that a group of people were “getting ahead” in the economic sector. About as ignorant as American coal miners in the age of wireless, solar and wind power in disbelief that non-whites are getting educated, richer… and economically ahead… in another industry. The same ignorance like when an American Airlines flight attendant asks if there is a doctor on board and doesn’t believe the black lady who offers to help.
Have I been passed over in uniform? Several times. While I cheer for the ones I admire, I get disappointed with the backstabbing liars who cheat their way up the ladder… but I have stayed.
Have I been harassed? HELL PHKN YEAH… perhaps not sexually… but by insecure people who believe that their importance and pnis magically become gigantic when they put down and step on other people, even if one of them hasn’t grown a pnis (female version of Trump that comes with its own pssy to grab and orangey hair)… but I have stayed…
The military does not 3D print recruits that are raised in isolation. They come from the same places that produce Canadians that go into Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Arts; same places that produce retailers, janitors, mechanics, hockey players and cooks. So what people culturally get away with in grade school likely reoccurs in highschool likely reoccurs in adulthood until it’s called out with effect. And I’m still here…
… because not all times are bad. When I stepped into an Afghan Village, even when the village elders knew that I was female, they saw my Canadian flag on my left shoulder and they treated me like an officer… while they “addressed” civilian males helping to rehabilitate the country, because addressing female ones was self-degradation. I do, however, remember having to work with a Canadian officer of Iranian descent… he requested to not have to work for his higher ranking female officer… something about the constant stress of challenging his manhood… culturally-induced insecurity…
When I step into a room where I am not known, or maybe even when I am, they read my rank. Just like stepping on a dojo tatami… reading belts… knowing that it is insulting to give a black belt or brown belt a wimpy attack; knowing it is heinous to attack. a white belt with full force… knowing how to accord the appropriate challenge and respect. In a room full of uniforms and civilians, the junior officers and non-commissioned go to me with their questions, because reading my rank and understanding the expectations that go with it is less confusing then trying to figure out civilians.
I think that even if we have migrated from silver screen’s “Father Knows Best” to anything on Disney Channel that is politically correct, wearing a uniform means I’m less likely to experience a stranger coming into the conference room, and having to choose between the young guy in the suit or the lady in the sundress, who ends up addressing the man by default because of the assumption that the female must be the Administrative Assistant… even if it is the reverse.
There is something about the uniform my Boss’s Boss (a female civilian) does not understand… but wishes she did. I don’t ask the junior officers to come to attention or address me with my rank or “Ma’am,” but they do… and sometimes purposely loud when they are aware that others are listening. Even when she seemed to attempt to threaten or penalize me for something I didn’t do, she couldn’t understand why I shrugged off her insignificant words… because she will never understand that I have survived worse harassment which makes her seem so amateur. That defensiveness that comes from the insecurity of not knowing that Leadership is earned when Trust is earned… that Trust comes with genuinely caring for one’s direct and indirect subordinates. That sinking feeling of not knowing why people follow me even if I don’t give out chocolate medals or threaten to fire people. That look of confusion seeing me get away with my hair up and shaved while in uniform four days a week, or all down with curls while rocking an ascot, cuff links and an Armani suit.
No, I will never be a female General like Whitecross or Carignan (ok… so the Engineers are way more innovative and accepting than the alpha male regimental rejects that poured into my branch in the 1990s)… but I stay… because it’s actually a really cool and yet humbling feeling to have female junior officers and junior non-commissioned officers asking me questions and looking at me… and I get to be what I wished I had when I was a junior nothing nothing, with no real role models, surrounded by males and more males, because whatever females graduated from Military College ahead of me often started in the Navy or Air Force, and eventually left when their male environment got over-bearing or when staying home and being mothers seemed more joyous than putting up with overgrown babies… like the one that pretends to run the country next door and prides himself on sexually assaulting women, making fun of victims, degrading the disabled, evicting black people, deporting brown people, and taxing the yellow countries that compete with his investments.
I think all my subordinates are older than me… maybe not as old as one of my first warrant officers, a Meteorology Tech, WO Gelineau, who said to me, a then Second-Lieutenant, that he had four kids… all of which were older than me… a polite nudge and reminder that while the officer may be in charge, sht will only get done when the officer understands who gets what sht done and inspires those same people to do it.
The elevator to the main floor opened. In it was a face I have not seen since 1996… I thought he may have died or disappeared. Former Commander of 1 Canadian Division Headquarters. Former Commander that worked at Fort Frontenac. Former General who reminded me of Montgomery Burns from “The Simpsons.” He was in the elevator… in a suit… working with defense 22 years after making Brigadier General… as a civilian contractor.
Why would I want to go onto revolving contracts where I would have to work two or three times harder and longer while re-establishing my credibility in every new place? It is somewhat of a relief to understand that I stay not because I fear leaving or not because I fear operating out of a comfort zone… it’s more like sometimes it makes sense to cut the grass of a large property with a lawn tractor than it does with a pair of scissors, and other times, it costs less and produces more value to allow. the neighbour’s cows to graze on it.
Today, my eldest daughter’s all-girl school asked me to be the main speaker at Remembrance Day ceremonies… mainly because they are so used to having someone’s father come in to speak, they wanted a female influence to inspire female minds… an opportunity that would not have happened had I retired two years ago.
I stay… because I don’t want to be one of those disgruntled ex-military civilian contractors that btch about whatever circumstance and left because of it. I am a Capricorn born in the Week-of-The-Prophet… quitting is not an option… adaptable to both seas and mountains, we leave when we feel like it, and in that sense, we are never late… because we run on our time and not anyone else’s.
