Memories of the First Life, Part 4
Teaching and Learning
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I was a little sad to say goodbye to Darryl, but I knew it was for the best. He was still in love with his old girlfriend and it was an unspoken thing between us. (I learned later that they got married). But Darryl always spoiled me and I’ve thought well of him over the decades.
Somewhere in the early months of 1982 - likely around April, since I don’t remember there being snow on the ground - I left Plattsburgh in my 1982 red Ford Escort, one gotten on an airman’s salary and a co-signer. There was no radio and no air conditioner. And, of course, no GPS! But a cassette player kept me sane and a very thick Thomas Guide kept me on the right track. First, I traveled to New Mexico to see my parents, then on to Denver, the city adjacent to Lowry AFB.
My sojourn as a technical training instructor (TTI) was relatively uneventful. Oh, I enjoyed it and had a lot of fun, but I won’t be posting too much about that fun here, especially since my mother’s reading this stuff. (Hi, Mom!) But, as I write this, more tales come to the fore from my aging memory.
Since I was only an Airman-First-Class (E-3) when I arrived at Lowry, it was often assumed that I had no practical experience as a bomb loader. The reason? During the technical training that comes directly after basic training and before assignment to one’s first duty station, there are some students that manage to score an average of 98% or better on the tests. Often, those students are offered TTI positions right out of school: that is, instead of going to get the practical experience of doing the job, they go right into teaching others. Since I was busy having fun during technical training and only achieved a high 80s average, I had been sent on to Plattsburgh. And I think that I was better for it.
None of my airmen students gave me any flak over this assumption and most of my NCO students didn’t either. However, there is always one. A staff sergeant called me out in front of the whole class: “What do you know? You’ve never been out at a real base to do this job.” I corrected him. (Side note: it was permissible for me to call all my airman students by their last names without their rank, but I received no explicit guidance on how to address NCO students. Using common sense, however, I always addressed NCO students as ‘sergeant.’)
Later, I told my boss about the incident. Abe Something (can’t remember) had all the dimensions and coloring of a cannon ball, accessorized by a hairless dome, a booming voice and, to put it mildly, an extrovert personality. He took absolutely no crap from anyone either above or below.
After I dimed on the sergeant, Abe called him into his office and we could hear Abe’s voice outside of the building. Abe wasn’t the kind of guy to give you a letter of counseling/reprimand or anything like that. He was the type to threaten to cut your eyeballs out and feed them to you. And he treated me like a little sister.
Being a TTI bequeathed to me several gifts. The six-week class designed to train TTIs to teach helped me to do three things:
• It helped me to minimize my innate shyness. (To those who know me in person: stop laughing! Thank the designers of this course for the hellcat you presently know and love/put up with.)
• It greatly reduced fear of making speeches, even impromptu ones. Preparation and practice are the keys, but once the fear is wrestled down, you can bloviate jaw-jack talk to your heart’s content without a script and without that funny feeling in your stomach.
• It minimized the horrid, annoying habit of peppering speech with verbal fillers, e.g. “like,” “you know,” and especially the dreaded “uh.” It also minimized “physical distracters,” e.g. moving your head too much, twirling hair (not a problem for me now, but then I had a little Afro), playing with pencils, shuffling papers and the like.
Being one state over from my parents was also nice. I went home on all the holidays and my mom, who was around 40 during that time, even came for a visit once, which was fun. All of my male friends wanted to know who the “new girl” was! One guy was particularly funny.
“Dang, who is that fine thang?”
”My mom.”
”Oh.”
There was a brief look of disappointment on his face, then hope.
“Is she married?”
”Yes. She’s married to my [American] dad.”
”Oh.”
We both burst out laughing.
“Can’t blame a brutha for trying,” he said. True enough.
Mom and Dad are both 81 now and celebrated their 52nd anniversary last year.
It was on Lowry AFB that I relearned the timeless axiom that you can’t always judge a book by its cover.
Back in those days, I was still rather inattentive as to how much gas was in my car and, one day, I ran out.
I kept flagging people down, but a little over a dozen cars passed me by. More than half of the motorists were black.
Suddenly, a white guy driving a pick up truck with the Stars and Bars in the back window stops. He’s wearing a cowboy hat and his plates were from a southern state.
The guy gets out and says, "Kin ah hep yew, ma'am?" I told him my plight. Of course he's got a gas can. He goes to the gas station, gets some gas and brings it back. He wouldn't let me touch the can and he refused any money from me, though I offered twice.
God bless him, wherever he is.
How many wonderful experiences have we missed in life because we judged some book by its cover?
Beautiful ending.