Monday, May 04, 2009

absence makes the heart grow fonder

I've been really missing the guard lately and it's kind of freaking me out. Because I DON'T really miss the guard, but I do. I am not really sure what to do with myself without that one screwy weekend per month where everything is not really "real", it's like your own separate alternate universe that no one understands except the people you are with.

I get text messages on guard drill weekend that really take me back. Messages like:

"Must. Cram. Meatball. Into. Donny's. Beer."

I miss Meghanism's, invented words like refreshness and perfemation, and completely false factoids like 'did you know that a McDonald's hamburger bun has as much sugar as a McDonald's shake?' (no it doesn't!)

I miss the smell of bacon and eggs on Sunday morning and Johnny O's dimples.

I miss building BDU-33's, even if it were 8 boxes of them, and even if we did have to tear them all back down again the next guard drill weekend because we never had to build them in the first place. (That's about 5,600 practice bombs)

I miss shaking out our dusty chem gear once a year and grumbling about having to put our sour gas masks on for fit tests.

I even miss getting made fun of for not once, but TWICE leaving my car running with the keys locked in the ignition.


There are plenty of things I don't miss. Lots, and lots, and lots of things I don't miss. But it's funny how those things fade away, and you are left with the parts that you do miss, and you wish you could just go back for a weekend and have it all be the same. But, it never will be.