Many of you are wondering WHY I am writing about this AGAIN. WHY am I spending precious energy worrying about this… much less spending the time to craft an article.
I am so glad you asked. Here is why I care. Why YOU should care.
The current trend of bashing and using the “D” word (I think we have all heard it enough, don’t you?) has been used, according to those who do it frequently, to correct the behavior of other human beings.
First of all, according to all those lovely commenters, it is not working. According to them, the sense of entitlement, the wearing of rank, the infidelity, the abuse of a service member’s paycheck, the fat and the lazy, the women who have too many children, the officer spouse demanding to be treated differently… these folks are still running amuck on every single military installation in the country.
What is it that someone once said about the definition of insanity? Why continue doing something that is not working? I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the feeling of banging my head into a brick wall.
Secondly, what about the tens of thousands of spouses who are volunteering millions of hours to make the lives of military spouses, active duty and veterans, better? What about the tens of thousands of spouses with advanced degrees and high-paying jobs? The tens of thousands of spouses who never sleep because they are busy taking care of things so that the service member can do their job without the worry about what is happening at home.
Oh, but I KNOW what you are going to say, remember… I read the comments.
“We are not talking about that spouse! Stop being so offended!”
But they ARE talking about that spouse. They ARE talking about that woman volunteering all those hours when she also happens to be overweight. They ARE talking about that woman with an advanced degree/high-paying job when she has a bad day and snaps at an employee at the PX. They ARE talking about that sleep deprived mother when she dares to leave the house in yoga pants.
If you think, for one moment, that this term won’t be used to describe you at some point… you are sadly mistaken. I have been called the name more times than I can count. Do I care? No. But don’t buy into the “we are only talking about the bad ones” nonsense.
