British girl in TN

OK...I'll downgrade to an interior cabin and bring my own bottle of booze. I promise!

 

Hey good to see you back ! How have you Been ?

 

I'll guess that'll have to do

 

I've been ok. How's you?

 

well, it's nice to see you around. I'm glad you came to say hello.

 

Don't feel too badly about that. I don't know you, either. Come to think of it, I've never known ANYBODY I've never met. So....we'll only be strangers once. After that, I just git stranger and stranger.

 

All the better knowing your OK ! too many good people have gone awol from here lately !

 

It's difficult to get rid of me for good.

You seem strange.

I'm planning to stay around.

 

I understand that strange is not for everyone, but sometimes you just gotta' let the badger out. I may be a bit weird or strange, but I'm usually not boring. Alas, most of my most entertaining friends and coworkers are gone these days, so I'm always on the lookout for others like-minded or tolerant. And so here we are on these forums....

 

Strange is great. I'm very odd myself.

 

I feel your displeasure. I also have three. The last one, oddly enough, is the last person my brother recruited out of Chattanooga when he was stationed there, and when she later heard of his divorce, they went for it. You'd think two marines could get along, but such was not to be the case. She's finding out that her twisted upbringing is ruining every relationship she tries. Nobody in her family can get along for more than 5 minutes, it seems. She was, however, the best of his previous wives. He's on number 4 and I stopped at 2. Some things are just not worth the effort.

 

My father in law was a Korea and WWII Marine. I got along with him real well. I had a couple of co-drivers when I was trucking in the 1970s who were Viet Nam Marines. The rest of the I think are half nuts or totally nuts. The ones who served in Iraq seem to be more racist toward Muslims.

 

War does strange and terrible things to those who go through it. Dad lied about his age and joined the army when he was 14. Oddly enough, even though he was in germany through the time of the nuremburgh trials he doesn't seem to have ill feelings towards them. Not so with the Japanese, and he never talks about what he saw in the far east while there. My brother the marine was in desert storm with saddam hussein's boys. His third wife was the daughter of muslim immigrants. I think most folks who went to war came back about half a bubble off on a torpedo level. I stayed out of the service, as I couldn't get in both times I tried. I doubt that I've missed much, having seen how it affected others, most of whom are now gone.

 

One of my codrivers during the mid-1970s who had just got out of Vietnam tours used to freak out when we drove through Pacheco Pass in California because it reminded him of some ambush. The other one with the same company went and killed himself a few years after Vietnam.

 

Still, got to pay a little attention when doing that 'in real life'. It can get you arrested!

 

And THAT is probably the saddest development of all in modern society. Except in SoCal, where the weirder you are, the more normal you seem. At least from my midwest perspective.

 

I ment 'letting the badger out' but may have read a too specific meaning into it