Associative disorder
By Karen Jones
Raw and exposed for inspection.
There’s a hustle and bustle, a rattle and hum, in the raw meat department. Shoppers are milling through all of those shiny, plastic sheeting-wrapped packages of muscle. Raw and exposed for inspection. These packages are hand selected and there is a sense of ownership once they are placed in the shopping cart. Like cavemen after a kill—don’t mess with someone’s bloody meat.
Arriving on the scene is Colonel So-and-So’s wife who has rolled in like the Queen of Sheba. Her husband runs one of the larger squadrons on the base. She believes this title gives her license to do as she pleases in the commissary (military grocery store). He rules the squadron, she feeds the ruler: therefore she can have the best meat selection available to the troops.
She went to another’s cart and swiped meat. Mrs. Colonel So-and-So liked the look of it and took what she felt was better suited for the commander. She had confidence that it was her prerogative. And no one stopped her either.
On military installations there is a perceived sense of hierarchy of who gets what. How can there not be some kind of pyramid in the military’s social world, too? The installations are run by a non-trifling, enforced, chain of command. The uniformed services take this directive as seriously as a heart attack. Their working environment’s world order can and does easily transfer over to the everyday exchanges.
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The example of the meat-thieving commander’s wife’s piss poor behavior has a flip-side as well.
We were last stationed at a smallish base in a smallish town. Pretty much what would be described as a “military town.” See, I, too, was a commander’s wife and knew the other “like spouses,” but I functioned under the radar. When I would go off-base and be involved in community activities, I was privy to and would often hear tales of commander’s spouses’ alleged grandiose misbehaviors.
And our commissary, too, was a hub of perceived social hierarchy and often the stark setting for such ghastly moments. For instance, supposedly a group commander’s wife was rumored to be just as much of a hard-ass and unpleasant of a character as her husband. She was described as a “total bitch” and that she would often cut in front of others waiting to check out – simply because her time was more precious as a commander’s spouse. This was preposterous. I knew the accused and she was a shy homebody who homeschooled her kids and held great respect for others. I asked one of these pot-stirrers if they actually knew Total Bitch. She confessed to just passing the story around and not actually knowing Bitch.
A military base is a microcosm of society. If the person in charge gets the best seat at a formal dinner, should he get the best food? Or if the commader is a jerk, then is his entire family a band of jerks? Perception overshadowing reality is a facet of the military.