Don't Ask...Don't Tell

Ever been picked last? Ever been fully aware that your team just had the bad luck of getting ‘stuck with you’? Not something I recommend.

When I got to my permanent duty station, I was optimistic. I was way smarter than the other new guys who were to be divided among the signal teams. Surely a team would want me before the guy who literally couldn’t stop himself from chewing on paper. Surely they’d pick me before the only other new female who weighed less than 100 pounds and looked perpetually ill. But guess what? I learned very quickly that intelligence doesn’t change HUM-V tires or service a generator. Smart doesn’t pound six-foot grounding rods into hard clay in an expedient manner…without whining.

The least appealing thing about me (in addition to my snotty intelligence) was my gender. No all-male team wanted to work with a girl. Girls messed up the whole dynamic – cute or not. Now all those sexual harassment classes the guys snored their way through had to be considered. No more girly calendars in the switch, no more openly scratching or adjusting one’s self. No more gas-passing contests, and perhaps worse – no more playing cards with naked women on them.

I now get the resentment. I wouldn’t have wanted me on my team either. I brought scented candles to the field and played my ‘Jewel’ CD in the switch. If they thought I was girly, I was going to give them girly. Fortunately – the situation eventually equalized. I got less sensitive and stopped bringing my own toilet paper on field problems, and they actually started to appreciate me.

But in all honesty, the first couple of months in Hawaii were pretty miserable. No one would eat lunch at my table. I came to my room at the end of a long, sweaty day in the motor-pool to find condoms and/or crude notes pushed under my door. Complaints went ignored…just boys being boys. I was terrified of my team chief; he gave off a threatening vibe and said some pretty terrible things to me…which made sleeping in a tent four feet away from him miserable.

Fortunately I managed to get a wonderful, supportive, super-cute boyfriend who was my only bright spot during that time. Seeing him at the end of the day made everything seem OK. Except that six months into our relationship, I found out he had a wife and two kids on the mainland. I never thought to ask – and he never bothered to tell.

Never made that mistake again. But things could only get better, right?