The path to lemonade, part X

I think I'm on a roll with this path thing so I'll keep going...

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Despite the Force Shaping news pretty much shattering my air force job to bits, I did still had a job to do.  I was still determined to make my class the best class ever and it wasn't right to let my current situation negatively impact a highly impressionable freshman class. I was their window into the air force and while I thought the air force was incredibly wrong in many ways, there was still a ton of great things about the military and I wanted to communicate those things.

I poured my life into my classes and students. I could truly relate to each and every one of them because I had been in their shoes. I ripped apart the air force's canned curriculum and started fresh.  I was sensitive to the college schedule, yet I demanded the respect of an officer. Students regularly stopped by to chat and I was always available to council and listen. It's funny, because I remembered doing the exact same thing when I was in ROTC - knocking on an officer's door to chat. I really do think I did an excellent job with my classes and students. The freshman class is designed to retain students.  Standards are enforced, but it's not a deal breaker if a students doesn't pass the physical fitness test.  Its purpose is to give the students a taste of the air force to make them want more until they have to make a commitment to the air force.  It became evident to me that I did my job, and did it very well, when almost all of my students signed up for ROTC again their sophomore year.  Now, I believe all of my former students have graduated and I know at least 22 of them were commissioned. Twenty two may not seem like a large number, but that is a huge retention rate. To put it into perspective, six people from my original class got commissioned. Six. We started with more than 50 and dwindled down to six. I'm not saying I was the sole reason these students continued the air force path, but I could have certainly let my situation cast a dark shadow in the air force.

Between classes and recruiting, I worked on my package to be sent to the Force Shaping board. When I had deployed with the 552nd Air Control Wing, I was never awarded a medal because my boss didn't put me in for one.  Every single other person who deployed on that mission was awarded a medal, but they were part of a squadron and the squadron commander submitted everyone at once.  I was part of the wing and fell through the cracks.  Someone in the 552nd ACW personnel office tried to run the medal up through the proper channels but apparently it was denied by the new wing commander.  He didn't know me, so it wasn't that big of a surprise. I learned, albeit way too late, that if you don't take care of yourself in the air force, that chances are you won't get taken care of.  My public affairs boss at the time was the biggest slacker I've ever met.  He even begged me to not take the ROTC job and stay at Tinker for another year until he was going to be gone. I also made multiple trips to Randolph to check out my personnel records and double checked that everything was in place for the board.  It was.

Lieutenants on the chopping block were given the option to separate early and not even face the board, but I truly wanted to stay in the air force, so leaving early wasn't an option.

However, while things professionally were falling apart, my personal life had finally seemed to pick up speed.

And yes, I'm talking about Craig. Craig finally decided he truly needed to check me out, and not from afar.  Took him, oh, only three years.  He was part of his company's leadership development team and while in this particular program, he was required to work in a retail store.  Guess what store he chose?

No, not one of the Waco stores.  That would be too easy, silly.

He chose Waxahachie.

Where's that you say?  Well, north of Waco and just south of Dallas.  He told me he wanted to be in a bigger city than Waco.  Apparently his map is different than mine because Waxahachie is a lot smaller than Waco.

Ahem, anyway, he was super close and the drive was about 80 minutes.  And we were in the same time zone! He was going to be there for six months and we were going to officially date.  Please do not misunderstand that to mean that I was his girlfriend, because I was not.  The boy moved to Texas for me, but I wasn't his girlfriend.  Sheesh.

Craig's birthday was about six weeks after he moved to Waxahachie and I had prepared his favorite meal, decorated his shabby apartment with silly birthday paraphernalia, gotten a cookie cake, and filled 31 balloons with messages (to state the obvious, he was turning 31).  Apparently, this made him realize I was the woman of his dreams and...

...he asked me to be his girlfriend.

Had I been taking a sip of a drink, I would have spit it right out.  Drinking I was not but laugh out loud I did.  Yes, Craig had finally asked me to be his girlfriend and I thought it was a joke.  I thought he was one of those guys that didn't like the label so when he finally asked I thought it was funny.  I quickly realized he was serious and said yes.

But I still think it's funny.