OCR Text |
Show like the marines on base. When I drop my long stop sign into the road, balance its weight against my hip, the traffic stops. Even my mother in our blue and white VW van stops before me. Little kids must stand at the curb. Sometimes I hold the cars longer than necessary, enjoy the way the world must wait for me on those school day afternoons, forgetting, for a minute, all that I can't stop. My body for one. Whenever I think of adolescence, my body and the military corps become entangled. Military models were the only ones available during the hurricane of adolescence and, therefore, the ones I lashed myself to. But military values, instilled because they contribute to a sleek, efficient military unit that will not only fight wars but win them, provide little solace to a girl whose body is quickly growing out of her control, refusing regulation. As a child, when I called my father at work, the soldier on duty answered the phone in the same way. CINPAC Fleet. Chief Petty Officer Williams speaking. This is not a secure line. Go ahead, Sir. And every time, I wondered if I should begin with an apology for not being a sir or just ask for my father and assume the soldier would hear my girlness and make the necessary adjustments. Growing up, I never met a female officer. The military women I heard about were my dad's secretaries whom he described as uniformly incompetent. Outside this tiny circle, the only other military women ever mentioned were those who made news for 150 |