I burned my draft card....

I was just today accosted from my own tiny little personal post office box by an insidious and nefarious notification requiring me to attend Jury Duty in Port Orchard, Washington, our county seat!

I'm thinking of defecting to Canada.

I know they said no more draft dodgers, but I've seen the draft, and this ain't your mama's draft notice.

OK, it ain't your papa's draft notice either.

I'm not a big fan of being on Jury Duty. I've served my country in the military. I've served it in doing search and rescue in the mountains. But I'd rather do any of that, than do Jury Duty.

Not to change the subject or anything, but I'd just like to state here and now, that I burned my draft card. Yes, I had a draft card. Yes, that was a long time ago.

I'll never forget it, the day I did it. I was in the parachute shop one day (my AFSC in the Air Force).

It was around the day half way through my military career, wherein I had just realized that I had packed maybe my 10,000th, 230 pound, B-52 drag chute and about a bit more of that in personnel chutes; when I ran across my draft card in my wallet.

So I pulled it out and said, "I've had it, I'm burning my draft card", and proceeded to burn it right there in the shop.

We had a motto for living the Air Force life. The Air Force put the view they wanted people to think we had on a bumber sticker:

"Air Force! A Great Way of Life"

Close, ours was slightly different and went:

"Air Farce. A Rat's Way of Life."

Matter of opinion and orientation, I suppose.

And easily achieved, as Craig found out when he took the "Great Way of Life" bumper sticker and rearranged it a little so it now said our motto. Out of rebellion and humor, he put it on his clothes locker, in his room, in the on-base barracks. We didn't have closets, we had clothes lockers, but good enough.

Anyway, our Squadron Colonel, on inspecting the rooms one day, did not find it amusing.

So about the time that draft card was burning down to my fingers, someone said, "You damn fool, you're already IN the service!"

But I said, "I don't care, I've had it!"

He then went on to say I could still be put in jail for that kind of thing. See we had recently discovered that we could be fined and jailed simply for getting a sun burn. Damaging Government property, they called it, they called us.

It simply all underlined the surreal nature of living the military life.

And I suppose, in the end, the truly salient and succulent nature and spice of my rebellion was somewhat lost, upon his declaration indicating the absolute control that our Government had over us. We were owned. And it sucked. And there was nothing we could do about it, until we timed out and became civilians again. And then would have to start doing our local government civic duties. Something some of us looked quite forward to.

Either way, I have jury duty....