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When you live
in a purely civilian community were there is no obvious military
presence, retired soldiers are kind of an oddity. The civilians
ask you questions but they don't get it when if comes to the
military. So I have enrolled the Colonel in remedial civilian
training. She had a four day weekend over Memorial Day weekend
and we worked hard on her military-to-civilian indoctrination.
First off no uniform wearing, and no talking about the Air
Force-- shop-talk was not allowed. There was no watching the
Military Channel on TV. We did watch the Memorial Day concert
on the steps of the US Capital, but that was a Veteran thing,
not a military thing.
The Colonel
wore civilian cloths, not to include any of the many t-shirts
she has with Air Force logos on them. This was not
anti-military training; that will never be our desire. This was
“getting ready to be a civilian” training. It is OK not to come
to attention in your living room when the Air Force song is
played on TV. We talked about when I would remove the 50
caliber machine gun rack off the top of her Hummer vehicle, but
we set no firm date for removal. Don't want to push the stress
button too soon. The brackets on the front bumper of her truck
used to hold the flags will stay on for a little while longer.
You never know when you could be in a veteran / military
parade.
We are going
to start emptying some of the sandbags we have filled and
stacked up, ready to go just in case. Both of the family dogs
will convert to being pets and we will drop the K9 working dog
title for Maggie and Libby, our four legged babies. The family
dinning room will no longer be referred to as the chow hall. We
had civilian friends at our home during the weekend, people who
had never been in the military.
We talked about
civilian things. The civilian in training must be working a
little because, come Tuesday morning, a duty day for the
Colonel, I had to push her out into the garage and gently force
her into her vehicle. She did not want to go back to the Big Air
Force. There is no doubt she is ready to retire and take off the
uniform she has worn for almost 30 years. Now as long as Korea
does not turn into a shooting war and stop-loss does not force
her to stay on active duty, I believe we are headed to
retirement and the land of civilians. We are holding our
breath. | 
