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I got a lift home tonight courtesy of a tow-truck driver name of Todd. Nice guy, sympathetic, without a hint of condescension, to some poor schmuck whose car is out of sorts. Chatty, even voluble.
As I directed him back to my place, he said that he'd been away for some years and was still re-learning his old stomping grounds--he'd been in Texas. Looking at his ink, and taking a stab, I asked him if he'd recently come back from Iraq. Until five months ago, he served as a 'fuel-jock' for the Army. His second year-long stint, with a month down between.
We talked about life in general, but he said the lion's share. Todd lost a friend on a convoy run, and watched the explosion from his tanker's driver's seat. How he hated the down-times between service runs--runs to fill generators at hospitals, topping up tanks and hummers, running over to the motor pools. During his first stint, he didn't sleep for three months. We commiserated over our divorces, his happened on the QT (he didn't know until he got home one day after his return to find a note in his just-emptied house). Todd laughed at his coworkers here, who gripe about working six or eight hours, and proudly stated he liked working 12 to 14 hour shifts. That the winter there gets just as cold as here, but it's drier. How it was a nice thing to find all of his pay waiting for him--he'd nothing to spend it on over there.
What he wasn't saying was just as loud, though I don't know if he was conscious of talking around it all: Todd doesn't dream--if he does, it's nightmares. He doesn't need to work right now, but he doesn't have a clue what to do with himself. Those long hours let avoid thinking, and let him sleep hard. Being alone, in a quiet house, doesn't worry him, it just drives him nuts. He's numb, and tired.
Todd shared that his time in Iraq and in Baghdad (his separate emphases) taught him how to not sweat the little stuff. That after waking up for two years to go and meet his fate every day, he learned what really mattered and what didn't. Not his words, exactly, but close.
I don't doubt him, not for an instant.
Stopping to think about it now, I see I've got it pretty good, and even that my problems are fairly easy to handle.
When I'd signed off on the paperwork, we shook hands and said goodbye. I wished him luck. He looked me in the eye and said thanks, without even a pause.
Maybe he knows, after all.
Good luck, then, and to all like you, man.
As I directed him back to my place, he said that he'd been away for some years and was still re-learning his old stomping grounds--he'd been in Texas. Looking at his ink, and taking a stab, I asked him if he'd recently come back from Iraq. Until five months ago, he served as a 'fuel-jock' for the Army. His second year-long stint, with a month down between.
We talked about life in general, but he said the lion's share. Todd lost a friend on a convoy run, and watched the explosion from his tanker's driver's seat. How he hated the down-times between service runs--runs to fill generators at hospitals, topping up tanks and hummers, running over to the motor pools. During his first stint, he didn't sleep for three months. We commiserated over our divorces, his happened on the QT (he didn't know until he got home one day after his return to find a note in his just-emptied house). Todd laughed at his coworkers here, who gripe about working six or eight hours, and proudly stated he liked working 12 to 14 hour shifts. That the winter there gets just as cold as here, but it's drier. How it was a nice thing to find all of his pay waiting for him--he'd nothing to spend it on over there.
What he wasn't saying was just as loud, though I don't know if he was conscious of talking around it all: Todd doesn't dream--if he does, it's nightmares. He doesn't need to work right now, but he doesn't have a clue what to do with himself. Those long hours let avoid thinking, and let him sleep hard. Being alone, in a quiet house, doesn't worry him, it just drives him nuts. He's numb, and tired.
Todd shared that his time in Iraq and in Baghdad (his separate emphases) taught him how to not sweat the little stuff. That after waking up for two years to go and meet his fate every day, he learned what really mattered and what didn't. Not his words, exactly, but close.
I don't doubt him, not for an instant.
Stopping to think about it now, I see I've got it pretty good, and even that my problems are fairly easy to handle.
When I'd signed off on the paperwork, we shook hands and said goodbye. I wished him luck. He looked me in the eye and said thanks, without even a pause.
Maybe he knows, after all.
Good luck, then, and to all like you, man.
